Canon XH batteries / battery thread

[Alex Leith]

I have a (non-canon) 6600 mAh battery, and I can get a good 5 to 6 hours continuous filming out of it. (6 tapes)

[Josh Green]

I had a BP970 in my Canon XhA1 last weekend and I got more than 8 hours out of it. I couldn't believe it!

[Gert Kracht]

I have a A1 for almost a month now. Yesterday i made recordings at the first Dutch Podcast Event. Three tapes filled in almost 4 hours and after that I did some filming in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam and Schiphol airport. After that i played a full tape before the camera said: 'Hey, this battery is almost empty. Please exhange'. Around 5 hours was the total amount of time.

I want to buy a 970, expecting to use it a whole day. Somewhere in June we leave for London to do some recordings at a concert on the 'Battersea Barge' and with any luck (they are hard to get over here) I will have it. Otherwise I'm going to get another 950.

I'm very well pleased with the 'user time' of the battery's.

One tip: I try to use them as long as I can. I charge them on the original device from Canon and use it until it's almost empty. With Lithium Ion there is a simple rule: You can recharge them for xxx times. (xxx=?). Every time you recharge the battery is ONE. So if you recharge it, when it's at 50%, that still counts as 1 complete charge.
I read that xxx is about 300-400 times. But that amount was not meant for the Canon battery.

I have used the Lithium-Ion battery's of my Sony camera for almost 7 years now and they still run a looooong time. I realy hope the new ones do too.

Succes,

Gert

[Erik Norgaard]

Originally Posted by Gert Kracht

One tip: I try to use them as long as I can. I charge them on the original device from Canon and use it until it's almost empty. With Lithium Ion there is a simple rule: You can recharge them for xxx times. (xxx=?). Every time you recharge the battery is ONE. So if you recharge it, when it's at 50%, that still counts as 1 complete charge.
I read that xxx is about 300-400 times. But that amount was not meant for the Canon battery.

I have used the Lithium-Ion battery's of my Sony camera for almost 7 years now and they still run a looooong time. I realy hope the new ones do too.

Thanks, so it seems that Canon's promises are in actual working conditions, about 1 working hour pr 1000mAh of battery.

Regarding recharging: The old NiCa rechargeable battereries had memory, you had to charge it completely first time or they would never reach 100%, and they have a memory effect which meant that you have to discharge the battery completely before recharging to maintain maximum capacity.

With Lithium-Ion batteries this is different. You can fastcharge the battery to 80-85% of capacity, but the remaining must be slowcharged to avoid overheating. Lithium-Ion does not suffer a memory effect meaning you do not have to discharge the battery completely before recharge, nor do you have to charge it completely before use. They will very slowly degrade to about 80% of original capacity, then capacity will drop rapidly.

I found this link on Lithium-Ion battery care (see tips at bottom):

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

See also Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery

What is interesting is that Li-Ion batteries age from the time of manufacture, not just from number of charges. To avoid this loss, it is recommended to store batteries at 0C/32F at 40% charge.

For this reason, these pages recommend that you do not get a second battery unless you really need it. If you need to shoot 10hs a day and cannot get a recharge, get a second battery, else recharge when possible.

Cheers, Erik

[Don Palomaki]

The old NiCa rechargeable battereries had memory, you had to charge it completely first time or they would never reach 100%, and they have a memory effect which meant that you have to discharge the battery completely before recharging to maintain maximum capacity.

More specifically, the battery cells may may suffer a ~10% voltage drop at the "memory point", and this may be enough to fool voltage sensitive things, like a camcorder, to think the battery is discharged, signal same, and shut down. The charge is in the battery, you just can't get it with voltage sensitive devices. (Note that the battery reconditioner can get it out because it uses a lower voltage cut-off point.) The reson for the voltage drop is reported to be a chemical phase change in one of the components in the cell. In typical camcorder batteries, this effect maybe induced by over charging (e.g., leaving the battery on trickle charge afte it has reached full charge).

Deep cycling tends to cure it because it consumes the phase-changed chemical and on the subsequent recharge it returns to the higher voltage phase.

[Erik Norgaard]

I get a bit confused here because you quote my part regarding NiCa batteries. I mentioned NiCa merely because recommendations for these batteries are often repeated for Li-Ion, but these do not apply. If your comment regards NiCa batteries, then this is not relevant for camcorders since these use Li-Ion batteries. Could you please clarify?

Some sources did recommend deep cycling once every 30 charges for batteries that are frequently charged. As I understand, this does not change the capacity of the battery but rather the reported capacity, such that you don't experience batteries run out prematurely. Is this the effect you refer to?

Cheers, Erik

[Eric Weiss]

in my experience, canon batts live longer and last longer than the cheaper brands.

[Clemente Gauer]

There is a very good article about LI-Ion batteries at Apple's website:

Check it out:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/

Greetings

Gauer

[Eric Weiss]

I have a lot of BP-945's.
Anyone using these with the A1?

How long do you think a BP-970 will run an XL1-S?

As stated above. It's always best to stick with Canon batts.
They run longer and last longer.

[Russ Speiser]

Just used an A1 with the 950 battery on saturday for a shoot that started at 2:30pm and stopped 11 hours later (obviously not continuous shooting). Used one battery, went through at least 4-5 tapes (I wasn't in charge of tapes). Near the end, I started putting it to standby to save battery life.

Russ

[Derek Elkins]

I try to avoid having to use it if possible, but I do have a spare Impact battery (and another cheap generic, which I pray I never have to resort to) that I've used with the A1. And yes, it did get stuck.

I paniced at first, but the solution was pretty simple. Just hold down the release button until the entire battery is out. If you just press it and expect the battery to release, it will get stuck. If you try to pry it out, you WILL be sorry.

Again, just hold down the release button until it's all of the way out and you'll be fine...

[Alex Dolgin]

Originally Posted by Gert Kracht

One tip: I try to use them as long as I can. I charge them on the original device from Canon and use it until it's almost empty. With Lithium Ion there is a simple rule: You can recharge them for xxx times. (xxx=?). Every time you recharge the battery is ONE. So if you recharge it, when it's at 50%, that still counts as 1 complete charge.

This is not true, in fact cycle count is based on amount of charge removed during use. If you use a battery two times, discharging to 50% each time (removed one full charge), it counts as 1 cycle from aging point of view. In fact Li-Ion cells do not like to be fully discharged, so it is better not to run them all the way down.

[Alex Dolgin]

Originally Posted by Erik Norgaard

Some sources did recommend deep cycling once every 30 charges for batteries that are frequently charged. As I understand, this does not change the capacity of the battery but rather the reported capacity, such that you don't experience batteries run out prematurely. Is this the effect you refer to?

Cheers, Erik

This is true for the batteries that have a built in fuel gauge, which measures the amount of charge going in and out. I know of only one brand that has it - Anton Bauer 14V batteries. This high end feature makes them more expensive to make. I am not aware of any 7.2V batteries that have a fuel gauge electronics in them.

[Doug Graham]

It's not the fuel guage, but the battery chemistry.

Nickel cadmium batteries can develop a "memory" effect if they are repeatedly partially discharged. Deep cycle charging them periodically helps to prevent this.

Lithium ion and nickel metal hydride batteries are not subject to the memory effect. On the other hand, they cost more to purchase and don't last as many charge cycles as a properly cared for nicad, so there's your tradeoff.

Li-Ion batteries are also said to suffer from a gradual decrease in total capacity over time, about 10% per year, irrespective of usage. However, I only have this from one source and haven't confirmed it.

[Lou Bruno]

Li ion has a operating life of 2 to 4 yrs. You do see a depreciation of capacity over that time, but that is the same with any chemistry of battery.