My 430EX II eats NiMH for breakfast

[wickerprints]

omgwtf srsly.


I'm a bit surprised...I was just out tonight for Halloween, and of course, I'm popping flashes left and right. Had some fully charged Duracell NiMH 2650mAh batteries in the 430EX II. And they lasted all of, what, 100 exposures? That was far, far short of what I expected.


Seems like I'm going to have to look into these eneloops from Sanyo.


Oh, and the PWs came through like a champ. Not a single misfire. Granted, I was just holding the strobe in one hand and the camera in the other...but they worked beautifully in ETTL.


Am I correct in thinking that new, NiMH batteries need to be cycled several times before they reach maximum capacity? If so, I hope this is the reason why I got so few firings out of them. Most of the shots weren't even with full flash power.

[WAFKT]

Can I assume that it was pretty dark outside? If so, then it's possible that your flash was firing at close to full power on each shot and possibly also pre-flash to assist focusing - great way to eat batteries. When used primarily as fill flash you should get nearly 3 to 4 times the number of fires on a fully charged set of batteries. The batteries may have been part of the issue too - not all NiMH rechargeables are created equal (were they new?) - check out the link below for a great demonstration on the differences between different batteries and some of the technical factors to consider.


http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=677074


I've gone with the Powerex 2700 mAh from Thomas Distributing after reading this article. Although Eneloops are great too (I may have gone with them, but the only place that I knew carried them was Amazon.com - which won't ship to Canada, and Amazon.ca doesn't carry them).

[wickerprints]

Yes, it was dark, but there was illumination from street lamps. I am pretty sure it was not at full power most of the time--there were a few shots that were at full power and I could really tell it cranked out the light. Also, I had the unit mounted to a PocketWizard so I could trigger off camera; I think this disables AF assist (for obvious reasons). Focus had to be obtained without any pre-flash. Nevertheless, even at full power the batteries shouldn't drain after only 100 firings, no?


I'm pretty sure it's these batteries. They are very new--they were charged only once and had not been fully discharged until now.


Eneloops, here I come. But I need to get a good charger for them too...an expensive proposition, considering these are just *batteries*.

[clemmb]

I shoot weddings with a 580EX and a 580EXII. I get around 500 shots from a new or fresh set of duracells or energizers. Many of the receptions are low light so the auto focus beam is always activating. I feel like I have to replace(buy new)the duracels more often then the energizers. They seem to last a bout a year.


Mark

[WAFKT]

But I need to get a good charger for them too...an expensive proposition, considering these are just *batteries*.

As spoken of in the article I referenced previously, the right charger makes a difference too on battery performance - be sure it's one that can do conditioning, it's sort of the equivalent of formatting your memory card in your camera in order to keep it performing at it's best and avoiding corrupt sectors. Also if you're on the road a lot (or travel oversees) you can pickup ones that plug into a vehicles cigarette lighter (12V aux. outlet) or have accessories for use in other countries. Haven't been overseas yet with mine, but the 12V aux. plug is a nice feature to have (if you pack it - I left mine at the hotel one trip and had to buy a $12 4 pack of AA's at 2 am at a gas station).