This is a bit long but I hope you’ll take the time to read this and hopefully understand how this industry works and why it is unnecessary to invoke any conspiratorial theories to explain performance specs of off-brand add-ons and peripherals like batteries. In addition, this will explain why as soon as a new camera model is announce, like the D800, before the end the week, non-Nikon batteries and grips are already available. (You mean they don’t have to reverse-engineer to try to duplicate the part design? No they don’t!) Note also while reading this missive that every time you see the name “Nikon” you can substitute it with any brands you like - Canon, Toshiba, Sony, or Dell and anytime you see the word “battery” you can also substitute with any other add-on parts and for any of the electronic industry that involves hardware, software and firmware - memory module, disk drives, LCD screens etc.
Nikon do not make batteries - never has and never will. No camera companies make batteries - battery companies make batteries. Today with the Li-Ion battery being the premium standard, there are only 3 or 4 companies making them and they are located in countries that have very lax environmental laws and worker protection rules - like Bangladesh, China and Philippines. Lithium is nasty stuff and if anyone tries to set up a factory in the US to manufacture them, each battery will cost $500!!! (Telsa Motors makes their battery in the US - now you understand why that car cost so much!) So battery companies make batteries for all the camera companies. Nikon will put out detail specs for a particular battery they need - physical dimensions and electrical spec. The important point to note is that the electrical specs are quite detail. In addition to the usual voltage and amp-hour capacity consumers are familiar with, there are detail electrical spec to meet - specifically, internal-resistences and temperature gradients during discharge and charge cycles and with different loading factors. The battery company winning the bid are then contracted to deliver x number of batteries with those specs to Nikon. Nikon sends out the same specs to their programing division who will either use internal programmers or more likely contract programers to write the software (firmware) routine which check the battery and compute state of battery life, shots left etc. that you are all familiar with. This is important - the programmers code the program on the spec provided by Nikon and it’s the same spec they think their batteries are manufactured to.
Now, back to the battery guys - manufacturing yield varies depending on the product (solid-state chips are notoriously very low - make 1,000 CPU chips and you lucky to get 200 to-spec usable device.) So, if they are contracted to deliver say 10,000 D7100 batteries to Nikon, they will make 2 or 3 times as many. As with any manufacturing process, it’s the setup time that cost the most resources and time - once setup and fine tuned, you just let the assembly line rip. (The same factory will have lines pumping out batteries for Canon, Samsung, etc.) Nikon then comes in and select all the ones that meets all their specs (within tolerance specified in their contract with the battery guys) - put their label on it and sell it as Nikon Batteries. Hopefully, if they make 25,000, they can find 10,000 acceptable by Nikon and deliver per contracted. (Occasionally this fails and that’s why you hear about shortage of gadget; it’s usually one of the contractor who couldn’t delivery enough up-to-spec parts of whatever parts they were supposed to.) Now, what about the rest rejected by Nikon? Some secondary market brand name vendor will come in and buy up some of the rejects that meet “most" of the specs. The obvious specs are easily testable ones like physical dimension, voltage and current capacity. The more important ones that deal with the internal operations are not disclosed so only Nikon (and their programmers under non-disclosure agreement) knows what they are. After the branded vendors have their pick, the remanent are sold off to no name vendors. Before the days of the Internet, these vendors sell them in flea markets in Hong Kong and Bangkok - now they sell them on Amazon.
So, if you buy from a no-name vendor, your battery may not even fit properly - these are defects. If you buy an off-brand battery from brand-name vendors (Neewer, Opticon, Eveready), they will fit and will proper work but because these were rejects from Nikon, the internal, and important spec will not be quite correct. So, if you use one of these batteries, Nikon camera’s firmware which was programed to check for specific internal resistance to calculate and present to you the reading of battery life left and number of estimated shots left will be incorrect. You may be lucky and get one that met all the spec but rejected for cosmetic reasons or was missed out by Nikon during their selection process.
Now, if you are in business to make batteries, why can’t you just make get a Nikon branded battery, reverse engineer it to get the spec and manufacture to that spec. Well, you can’t make much money with that - you have to gamble on the popularity of that camera model, you don’t know how many units of that camera will be sold, you don't know how long Nikon will use that format of battery and spec and so you may not even recover the cost of reverse-engineering cost and starting up the assembly line. The only way secondary market exists for camera’s perishable parts and other electronic products are these “surpluses” that are not quite up to spec.
So, there is no need for overt conspiracy on the part of Nikon to screw the non-Nikon parts vendor. It’s just the natural outcome of these products not meeting all the important specs the firmware inside the camera that was programed to test and check and calculate to present to the user. And why not meet the specs - well if that part did, it would have been included in Nikon’s selected batch.
Nikon do not make batteries - never has and never will. No camera companies make batteries - battery companies make batteries. Today with the Li-Ion battery being the premium standard, there are only 3 or 4 companies making them and they are located in countries that have very lax environmental laws and worker protection rules - like Bangladesh, China and Philippines. Lithium is nasty stuff and if anyone tries to set up a factory in the US to manufacture them, each battery will cost $500!!! (Telsa Motors makes their battery in the US - now you understand why that car cost so much!) So battery companies make batteries for all the camera companies. Nikon will put out detail specs for a particular battery they need - physical dimensions and electrical spec. The important point to note is that the electrical specs are quite detail. In addition to the usual voltage and amp-hour capacity consumers are familiar with, there are detail electrical spec to meet - specifically, internal-resistences and temperature gradients during discharge and charge cycles and with different loading factors. The battery company winning the bid are then contracted to deliver x number of batteries with those specs to Nikon. Nikon sends out the same specs to their programing division who will either use internal programmers or more likely contract programers to write the software (firmware) routine which check the battery and compute state of battery life, shots left etc. that you are all familiar with. This is important - the programmers code the program on the spec provided by Nikon and it’s the same spec they think their batteries are manufactured to.
Now, back to the battery guys - manufacturing yield varies depending on the product (solid-state chips are notoriously very low - make 1,000 CPU chips and you lucky to get 200 to-spec usable device.) So, if they are contracted to deliver say 10,000 D7100 batteries to Nikon, they will make 2 or 3 times as many. As with any manufacturing process, it’s the setup time that cost the most resources and time - once setup and fine tuned, you just let the assembly line rip. (The same factory will have lines pumping out batteries for Canon, Samsung, etc.) Nikon then comes in and select all the ones that meets all their specs (within tolerance specified in their contract with the battery guys) - put their label on it and sell it as Nikon Batteries. Hopefully, if they make 25,000, they can find 10,000 acceptable by Nikon and deliver per contracted. (Occasionally this fails and that’s why you hear about shortage of gadget; it’s usually one of the contractor who couldn’t delivery enough up-to-spec parts of whatever parts they were supposed to.) Now, what about the rest rejected by Nikon? Some secondary market brand name vendor will come in and buy up some of the rejects that meet “most" of the specs. The obvious specs are easily testable ones like physical dimension, voltage and current capacity. The more important ones that deal with the internal operations are not disclosed so only Nikon (and their programmers under non-disclosure agreement) knows what they are. After the branded vendors have their pick, the remanent are sold off to no name vendors. Before the days of the Internet, these vendors sell them in flea markets in Hong Kong and Bangkok - now they sell them on Amazon.
So, if you buy from a no-name vendor, your battery may not even fit properly - these are defects. If you buy an off-brand battery from brand-name vendors (Neewer, Opticon, Eveready), they will fit and will proper work but because these were rejects from Nikon, the internal, and important spec will not be quite correct. So, if you use one of these batteries, Nikon camera’s firmware which was programed to check for specific internal resistance to calculate and present to you the reading of battery life left and number of estimated shots left will be incorrect. You may be lucky and get one that met all the spec but rejected for cosmetic reasons or was missed out by Nikon during their selection process.
Now, if you are in business to make batteries, why can’t you just make get a Nikon branded battery, reverse engineer it to get the spec and manufacture to that spec. Well, you can’t make much money with that - you have to gamble on the popularity of that camera model, you don’t know how many units of that camera will be sold, you don't know how long Nikon will use that format of battery and spec and so you may not even recover the cost of reverse-engineering cost and starting up the assembly line. The only way secondary market exists for camera’s perishable parts and other electronic products are these “surpluses” that are not quite up to spec.
So, there is no need for overt conspiracy on the part of Nikon to screw the non-Nikon parts vendor. It’s just the natural outcome of these products not meeting all the important specs the firmware inside the camera that was programed to test and check and calculate to present to the user. And why not meet the specs - well if that part did, it would have been included in Nikon’s selected batch.
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