Photography 101
A Beginner’s Guide to
Flash Photography
Power Management of Your Flash
(Part 41)–
As my photo studio, Benjie’s Photography, is presently on its 31st year of operation, I have employed and trained so many photographers that I already lost count on their numbers. Interestingly, these photographers have a trivial but common habit (or behaviour) that our operations department silently used to classify them. Ace photographers would not allow their batteries to be charged by others. They want their battery charging to be done personally. On the contrary, second rate photographers welcome the assistance of operations department to charge batteries for them and many of these photographers are quick to blame the same assistant if some shots (or wedding sequence) are missing due to the flash that did not fire.
Benjamin Rivera
The bottom line is, charging habit of a photographer often tells or draws the line between an “average photographer” and a “photographer with exceptional ability.”
Indeed, there are more facts and fallacies that a newbie photographer must know about the “power management” of electronic flash. Read on.
More about Battery Charging
Half Truth:
The charging guide that says, “Use only company recommended chargers for a given battery brand or better yet use the package charger that goes with the battery,” is not absolutely the best for your battery. A light user of electronic flash may not notice the half truth to this statement but as a heavy user of flash, I am saying this based on my personal experience.
To cite this observation, a year ago we purchased 24 pieces of batteries in six packs (four AA size per pack with quick charger included) or 24 pieces of AA size 2500 Ah capacity. Then we purchased another 24 pieces of the same battery without a charger, making a total of 48 pieces of NimH AA size. Our record showed that the average number of charge for the said batch was not more than 76 times. However, as of our last inventory done in the first week of December 2009, 14 pieces of this batch were already ineffective including a few that are now weak.
This means that the number of charge cycle (more than 500) being promised by the manufacturer did not prove true for the dead batteries. This happened even as we tried to follow their recommended charging procedure and use only their supplied charger.
My suspicion is that, the charger is not good enough to handle the battery gently. Sophisticated battery chargers are quiet expensive and economics dictate that it’s foolish to sell a very good charger and a good battery at a relatively cheap price. But the pressure of competition may have forced the battery resellers to pair their battery with a moderate performance charger.
This brings us another question: What attributes should we look for a good battery charger?
Before we could answer that question, there are basic facts that we need to understand about the battery:
1. Battery Capacity – It is the total energy stored in the battery. It is expressed in mili-ampere hours (mAh), i.e., AA size with a rating of 2500 mAH.
2. Ampere/Hours – It is the current flow for one hour measured in amperes. For smaller batteries, a miliampere-hour (mAh) rating is used. For example, a 2500 mAH battery means it will release 2500 milliamps of current at a specific voltage for one hour before the battery is discharged.
3. Charge rate – is the maximum current a battery charger can supply to a battery being charged. Charge rate is crucial in determining total charging hours of a battery.
4. Trickle charge - is a charge rate at very low current just to keep a battery fully charged, but low enough to avoid overcharging.
5. Overcharged battery – A newbie photographer must take this seriously. It could lead to many nasty consequences such as:
• Shorten the life of your battery.
• Overcharged battery will cause the battery to become extremely hot and at this state, it will cause cell vents to open and nasty gases to escape. In extreme case that vents fail to open, the pressure builds up inside the cell causing it to expand and in worst case, it could explode and cause fire.
