battery tester

shaun40400

hello again peeps
seem to be here as much as the dairy pages these days

i have 5 sets of rechargeable batteries that i use with my camera ..so not used all the time

last year i could charge them up on sunday and work with them thur fri

now i have to charge them over night and use the next day

i know they dont last forever,, but is their a simple way to check,,,,
1 how much charge is in them with some accuracy??
2 whether its my charger that is duff ?

thanks s

isofa

There are testers, but you'd be much better off investing in good quality a delta-V charger, good chargers will test the cells before charging and charge each cell separately, monitoring the voltage, until they are at peak full charge. The difference in using a standard charger and a dV charger is incredible. I use them for all my professional flash guns, and sets of cells I used to only get a 50 to 100 shots from I now get hundreds more, literally.

Have a search of the forums on this topic, it's cropped up before.

I can recommend the Ansmann chargers from Tantronics: http://www.tantronics.co.uk plus also the Ansmann cells, I find this well outlast similar ranged Uniross ones.

If you want to charge batteries well in advance, look at: Sanyo Eneloop, CAMLINK Ready 2 Go and Uniross Hybrio and Ansmann maxE ranges; as these retain their charge for much longer periods unused than normal NiMH cells.