Standard camera battery charger - if only

[Malcolm_Stewart]

Just seen this announcement for mobile phones. Now, if only something similar was coming for cameras and camcorders. I'm off to Wales later this week, and I really need to take my 5D for family groups, and my 1D MkIII in case there's time to visit the Gigrin Farm Red Kite Centre, plus an HD camcorder, and a pocket compact. And they all need and have different sized chargers.

Standard phone charger on way

[sillyconguru]

Just seen this announcement for mobile phones. Now, if only something similar was coming for cameras and camcorders.

What about this?

[Malcolm_Stewart]

Thanks - that's new to me.

I wonder how it deals with chipped batteries.

[nspur]

I've got one of the Uniross chargers and they work so long as you can get the positive and negative terminals to mate with the battery ones (ignore any other terminals) This means unless the terminals are on different sides of the battery or the battery is outside the voltage range it should work. I use mine for mobile phone batteries and camera ones and it even works on the new Canon LP ones. Generally it charges faster than the manufacturer's own device. It is, though, lousy at charging NiMH AA cells.

[Nod]

Thanks - that's new to me.

I wonder how it deals with chipped batteries.

Works fine on my EN-EL3e batteries (and all other LiIon packs I have. Oh, it does 2 AAs or AAAs as well). Comes with a car lead too.

[GeoffR]

A standard battery charger for mobile phones, which all use the same battery voltage of 3.7 V, is a relatively simple matter. Cameras are another animal entirely. Taking the Nikon range there is the EN-EL3 at 7.4 V, the EN-EL4 at 11.1 V and the EN-EL2 at 3.7 V one charger for that lot is going to be somewhat more complex than the mobile phone charger. Add in the need for anninterface with the internal electronics of the EN-EL4 to ensure safe charging and the price is going to be around the same as Nikon's own charger. We however want it to interface with Canon, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Fuji etc. batteries too. Yes I know that many are single cell, dumb, batteries but each inteligent battery will require a suitable circuit. That covers the LiIon batteries now for the NiMh batteries that Canon have only recently stopped using in the EOS1D/s series and Nikon used in the D1.

I love the idea, but I don't thinh any of us would love the price and neither Canon or Nikon will ditch the higher voltage batteries in their top of the range models. What we might get is a universal charger for 7.2 V batteries that can cope with 3.7 V batteries. This will only cover a next generation of cameras though. I don't expect to be able to reduce my three chargers/adaptors for some time yet.

[Malcolm_Stewart]

Slightly off topic, but relevant, I think.

I use a 9V rechargeable in my smoke detector, and these take 14 hours for a full charge. Of course, I forgot and the battery got 24 hours of charging in a fairly modern charger (auto-sensing NiCd/NiMh or so it claims - but not it seems for the 9V circuit.).
The battery came out somewhat longer that it went in, and detached from the outer case; and I was able to count the separate cells. Fortunately there's no length restriction in the smoke detector and it's doing its monitoring for me once again. (I do have a 2nd. smoke detector...)