Save money

If you worked out what it costs per unit of electricity to use disposable batteries, you'd buy rechargeables to fit all your portable power needs. These ones seem to work well.

easily rechargeable

Duracells rechargeable batteries are some of the only ones that actually do what it says on the box - recharge easily. All you need is a type A charger for standard [AA] batteries, the batteries, a socket and a couple of hours time. Once charged they last for ages even on my power-guzzling digital camera. They are very tough and mine have been through a lot since they were bought and still they are going strong. Apart from being strong on the outside they are also very well made on the inside and can be recharged over and over again without ever getting tired. So if you have a type A charger and a need for some good batteries then get these because they are really the top of the range ones.

Good only as an occasional spare

This digital camera battery is designed as a replacement to the CGA-S006, a battery widely used by Panasonic cameras. Now anybody who has ever looked into the cost of an original battery (that is one manufactured by Panasonic) will know they are rather expensive, and these third-party replacements are a fraction of the cost. So the question is are they worth it.

I spend a lot of time traveling to places where I'm not in easy reach of a power point to recharge my battery, so I thought it would be sensible to invest in a spare one. And naturally I wasn't paying £46 when I could get one that's got a slightly higher mAh and voltage for £12. But to be honest I'm disappointed with this battery. The first thing I thought was strange was that the charging time is so much longer. With the charger it normally takes around ninety minutes to charge my original battery (the charger switches off when it detects the battery is full.) This replacement one however takes just on three hours to charge (three times longer for a slighter higher rating?). OK, so that may not really be a problem, but you would expect the battery to last as long, if not longer than the original. Sadly it's performance is well less. I've had my camera for nearly a year and with the original battery you can take roughly 300 jpgs which is actually quite good. However this replacement last for only around 200 photos if not slightly less. Finally it's rare but every now and again with this replacement I get an error message on the camera, which I can only fix by switching it off and removing and reinserting the battery.

Ok, that's the bad, now for the good. As I've already mentioned the price of these batteries are a fraction of the original, so they are really good value. Granted there are a few problems with it, but nothing is perfect. Maybe three stars is too generous considering, but I will only be using this battery as an occasional spare so yes, I'm disappointed but believe it or not I'm happy enough with it as it has already came in handy. If you've lost or damaged your original battery and want one just to replace it then I would actually recommend that you spend the extra money and get the 'real' one. But if it's a spare you're after and you're willing to put up with the problems then I guess that this replacement will do you fine.

Does what it says!

Bought this as a spare for my Canon Ixus 950is. Small and powerful lasting well over 200 pictures with display turned on. Good price from Amazon at the moment.

Batteries

What can i say - its a Canon battery that provides the power for my IXUS 50. And you can recharge it!!!!

Reliability - of Sony and Amazon

I bought my Sony Cybershot DSC-N1 from Amazon on 22 June last year. It's a brilliant camera. The NP-BG1 rechargeable battery failed catastrophically on 20 June 2007 - just under the 12 month guarentee - a very poor battery life. Sony seems to be dogged with poor battery quality for PCs and now cameras.

Amazon was unwilling to provide a replacement battery though it was initially willing to refund the cost of my camera if I returned it. However, this brilliant camera is no longer available. Catch 22. In a second e-mail exchange Amazon (a week after the failure) claimed that the camera was now out of warranty ie the 12 months guarentee doesn't apply to when an item fails, but when you report and return it. You can't do always report the same day when you are away. Amazon has succeeded and worn me down. I paid for another battery.

Spare battery....nuff said.

I bought a spare one of these for my 5D.

It's rated at 1390 mAh and 7.4V. As it's an official Canon product it won't invalidate your warranty if that's a consideration.

These battery packs give a very high number of shots and I feel confident with two of these fully charged I can shoot all day, review photos to my heart's content and use battery draining IS lenses without worry. In fact I've only had to change batteries on one occasion and by that time I'd had enough anyway! I think they are rated to give around 800 shots.

Highly recommended.

Helps balance out the weight

I have a EOS 40D which, when combined with my day to day L series 24-70 lens, is very heavy and completely out of balance.
This base helps get the camera back in balance.

The grip has a shutter button and a 'dial wheel' for use in portrait mode however I tend to never use them (The grip has a safety switch to disable these buttons which is handy).

It also holds a second battery which in my experience is only worthwhile when using the pop up flash or reviewing pictures on the LCD a lot.

My only complaint is that you have to remove the battery door off the camera body. This means if you want the flexibility of taking the camera without the grip, you'll need to take this small (easy to lose) cover with you separately - it would have been nice if they could have worked the grip to have space built in for the cover.

EDIT: As it happens, the mechanism to secure the grip to the camera uses plastic gears. If you over tighten this (very easy) you'll be paying £50 to canon to have it removed, and the broken one is not covered under warranty.

I'm not buying another, this has happened to me twice now... I'll keep a look out for a clone with metal gears

Cannon NB-5L battery charger

Red light charging, green light charge complete, simple.

I used this twice already and charge times varied between 45mins and hour and half, both times the battery was almost empty, I'm sure this will charge quicker if your battery still has some life in it.

Overall, its a battery charger, nothing complicated and easy to use.

silly money

I've just bought a panasonic dmc fz7 with a 2 gig sd card. this gives around 600 pics at 6 megapixels. the battery allows for around 300 so I thought I'd invest in a spare. Saw this one at a price 1/5th of the original, in fact the postage set by Amazon was more than the cost of the battery! Delivery took 2 days from ordering, which was 2 days before the promised despatch date, not bad eh? Actually it's a higher rating than the original battery too, 800 ma compared to 750ma. Haven't managed to run it down yet despite taking pics of everything in sight, the computer, the fire, the stereo system, the tv, the girl friend, (she told me I had to take one of her)the garden.......and so on.
Very happy with the product and the service. Excellent

Brilliant battery

This rechargable battery is brilliant. It last for hours, I took my camera on holiday and only had to charge the battery once a day after taking photos all day long. If you use your camera less then you may only have to charge the battery every other day on holiday. I'd recommend buying this battery because it will save you a lot of money in the long run & of course using rechargable batteries is better for the environment. One tip though - if you buy two batteries & carry the spare one, if you get too snap happy and the battery runs out you'll always have a back up.