Non OEM batteries, better?

[Pinphot]

I've posted this information/observation as a supplemental to a different thread, but I thought it might be something worth raising in it's own thread.

My postman delivered a couple of non OEM NP95's I ordered from 7dayshop.com for the princely sum of £2.99 each this morning and they have a slightly higher capacity than the OEM battery that came with the camera, (3.7V 1800mAh/6.7Wh rather than 3.6V 1800mAh/6.2Wh on the OEM item). Having charged one and put it in the camera, the camera startup seems much more responsive and less reluctant to wake from sleep.

I'm not an electrical engineer, but would a difference in voltage of 3% or in capacity of maybe 8% make that much difference, or is it possible that the OEM battery is just not quite delivering the capacity required for the camera to work reliably?

Alternatively, could some of the NP95's delivered with the camera not be performing to spec? I haven't had a voltmeter on the original battery or know how to test capacity, but the difference in performance does seem quite marked, and having tried several restart from sleep cycles this evening, the issues I was previously having seem to have all but disappeared. The battery hasn't blown up on me yet either!!

Hopefully the new batteries might give me a few more frames on a charge than i've been getting up to now as well.

Why is it, I can get 2000 frames out of my Canon 5D2 battery, (also rated at 1800mAh although 13Wh), that has a much heavier shutter mechanism, (I assume), and the need to raise a reflex mirror whilst I can only get 300/450 frames out of the X100?

Cheers,

Mark

 

[cpharris]

User _larky on this forum had one of the 7dayshop (IIRC) batteries blow up during charge, taking the charger with it:

http://mail.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102818&page=3

Unlucky I think... I would say that a 3% voltage increase is unlikely to hurt the camera. Could make things more snappy if the Fuji battery is struggling to cope with the cameras power demands. But, I presume Fuji tested this!

DSLRs use a specific TTL metering and phase-detection focus system (unless using a live-view mode). Therefore, normally the sensor is only switched on when taking a picture. Mirrorless cameras (eg. m43, NEX, X100) use the sensor continuously for contrast focus and metering, which drains the battery significantly.

 

[peripatetic]

Ooh, I have purchased two of those £2.99 batteries myself. I have charged them up (no explosions fortunately) but not tried them out yet.

I generally don't have problems shooting so much that I get through a battery charge in a day, but this is interesting.

I'm also going to try a 45Mb/s 8Gb Sandisk card instead of my current 15Mb/s 16Gb one.

Also I'm finding now that I'm getting pretty reliable startup times in the 2-3s region rather than some of the weird 5-30s problems I had when I first started using it.

 

[cpharris]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember people saying the camera was starting up slowly if the SD card being used wasn't first formatted using the camera.

I have a 16Gb Sandisk UHS-1 card, and it seem fine to me.

 

[Pinphot]

User _larky on this forum had one of the 7dayshop (IIRC) batteries blow up during charge, taking the charger with it:

http://mail.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102818&page=3

Unlucky I think... I would say that a 3% voltage increase is unlikely to hurt the camera. Could make things more snappy if the Fuji battery is struggling to cope with the cameras power demands. But, I presume Fuji tested this!

DSLRs use a specific TTL metering and phase-detection focus system (unless using a live-view mode). Therefore, normally the sensor is only switched on when taking a picture. Mirrorless cameras (eg. m43, NEX, X100) use the sensor continuously for contrast focus and metering, which drains the battery significantly.

Doh, yes of course. I forgot about all of the extra electronics needed to run cameras of this type. Engage brain before etc.....

As to the other poster mentioning card formatting issues, this is a separate issue. I had been having problems with the camera refusing to wake from sleep and sometimes crashing and not wanting to start at all without several cycles of the on/off switch. When the camera did start, it was generally quite fast, but the new battery appears to have solved the issue so far. Went to work this afternoon with the new battery, and the camera felt like a different beast. As I suggested, perhaps the X100 is very sensitive to batteries out of, or close to tolerance?

Cheers,

Mark