Canon CBK4-300 Rechargeable Battery and Charger Kit for PowerShot Cameras
Amazon.com price : $36.00
In Stock.
The Canon CBK4-300 AA battery and charger kit is designed to work with any Canon digital camera that’s powered by AA batteries. This charger kit comes with four AA rechargeable batteries powered by Nickel Metal-Hydride technology that’s free of the frustrating “memory” effect. Although designed by Canon for use in Canon cameras, these batteries will work in any electronic device powered by AA batteries. What’s in the box Canon CBK4-300 AA battery charger, flip-down plug adapto…
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Tagged with: Battery • Cameras • Canon • CBK4300 • Charger • Powershot • Rechargeable
Filed under: Canon PowerShot SX20IS
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I usually stay with Canon accessories for my Canon cameras, just for the ‘peace of mind’ I can expect from the same manufacturer. But in this case, I see no reasons to choose this package (Canon CBK4-300 Battery and Charger Kit) just because of the brand name. Consider the following facts:
1. Canon is not a battery manufacturer. So those 2500mAh rechargeable NiMH cells are simply re-labeled from other vendors.
2. All 2500mA NiMH cells in the market are plagued by the problem of high self-discharge rate. That is, if you charge up a set of those AA cells and leave them in your camera for a few weeks, they may become completely drained before you can take any pictures.
For the price of this Canon battery and charger kit, you can buy an equally good ’smart’ charger (for example, the Sony BCG-34HE4), plus eight of the latest generation LSD (low-self-discharge) cells such as SANYO eneloop, Rayovac Hybrid, or Kodak Pre-Charged. Even though their stated capacities appear lower at 2000-2100mAh, those cells can hold 80% of their charge for 6 months or longer. So you don’t always have to recharge your camera’s batteries the night before, and you can keep another set of charged batteries as standby. This makes LSD cells much more suitable for digital camera applications.
Personally, I have retired all of my old-genreation (2500mAh) NiMH cells, and am using only LSD cells in photo equipment now.
I went with the Canon batteries & charger to avoid any problems with the Canon digital camera they are used for. Whenever I’ve used rechargeable batteries in an electronic device, they never seem to last long enough. So for the camera, I went with the same brand batteries. I’ve taken probably 100 photos, use the flash and zoom often, and had the camera on for almost two hours straight in a photography class and the batteries still don’t show any loss of power with respect to the camera’s battery status indicator. And since this kit comes with 4 batteries, I always have 2 charged spares. Maybe cheaper rechargeables would work, but it wasn’t worth the risk and hassle if they failed right when I needed them.
I’ve bought NiMH (nicknamed Nim-Hah’s) from Canon, Energizer, Radio Shack, & RayoVac. We use them in exactly the same way and with the same load everytime. So it’s easy for us to tell which gives us the best performance.
How we use them: dozens of flash pictures in a Canon digital camera
Results:
The Canon batteries can recharge the flash diode 30-50% faster than the other brands we tried.
The Canon batteries give us double or more snapshots before having to replace.
Final Note: Some critiques will say that they can’t see the difference in value for the higher price. I would say “bull”. faster flash warmup and less battery chnges are worth the difference.
JR Fent
IT Recruiter
jrfent.com