Battery care

How do you treat your batteries, recharge after every outing even if you only take 100-200 shots or recharge at some % before flat or run flat.

I run mine to about flat. Normally 5% or less. I have that fear of setting a memory in the battery. Some say you needn't worry about that anymore, but I feel comfortable doing it this way. Besides, every new battery I have purchased seemed to need at least 2 charge cycles before it got up to its full life potential.

Danno said:

I run mine to about flat. Normally 5% or less. I have that fear of setting a memory in the battery. Some say you needn't worry about that anymore, but I feel comfortable doing it this way. Besides, every new battery I have purchased seemed to need at least 2 charge cycles before it got up to its full life potential.

Click to expand...

same here. with my camera, i know when the battery is down without looking at the indicator - auto focus and full shutter release won't work. as most people here, i carry a second fully charged battery in my bag. comes in handy in situations like this. just have to remember to recharge the one that just ran empty.

I let mine run down partway but never check the actual percentage. When I needed to clean the sensor of my D600, the body wouldn't go into mirror lock up. Then I found out the battery needed to be charged at least 50% (I was just under that). Not sure what your D500 needs for mirror lock up, but keep that in mind.

The battery in the grip is the one I shoot from primarily and I recharge that whenever it's convenient. I like to keep it relatively full but it's been shot dry more than once. The battery in the camera-body is my secondary/backup battery and it stays at, or very near, 100% most all the time since I rarely need to draw from it. If I know there's a Big Shoot coming up I put both in the charger the night before regardless of what the meter says.

The best practice with Lithium ION batteries is to NOT let them completely discharge below their 2.5v per cell, because the switch then won't let a normal charger recharge the battery.

They also have a charge meter built in... If you frequently recharge after a few uses... it's recommended that after about 30 cycles, you discharge the battery pretty good... and then recharge it...This re-calibrates the built in charge meter...

They don't have a charge memory like Ni-Cads but they do have a charge meter memory...

FredKingston said:

The best practice with Lithium ION batteries is to NOT let them completely discharge below their 2.5v per cell, because the switch then won't let a normal charger recharge the battery.

Click to expand...

Fred, Agree with everything else you're saying, but where did you get this, and what switch are you referring to?

Wikipedia (see third paragraph here) describes this quite differently, effectively saying that at ~2.5v, a protective circuit kicks in that prevents further discharge until the battery has been recharged. In other words: deplete all you want, as long as you're not exceeding the maximum charge/discharge cycle count, your battery won't really care.

Five tips for extending lithium-ion battery life - TechRepublic


see paragraph #4

Fred, Thanks for sharing the source. The author does not give any reason or source for why he thinks fully discharging is an issue, so this seemingly becomes a matter of belief.

I have been working on a piece of software for a long time that forced me to run through numerous battery charges on my Nikons. I usually go until the camera shuts off, and have yet to see any issue resulting from this. Also doesn't make much sense to me that it would be one (I'm a MSEE).

I hear what you're saying... and I have also run my En-El15s down pretty good... Nikon has been putting Lithium batteries in their cameras for a long time... and I'm not sure if the concept of a switch to limit whether the cells drop below the threshold shuts if OFF to prevent complete draining was in their original specifications, and at what point they may have slip-streamed the feature in their batteries...

If the battery has a meter that can be spoofed by constant charging, and the meter becomes inaccurate, I don't know how the battery in that condition can accurately determine when to turn the battery OFF to keep from draining beyond its recovery threshold...


As a safety precaution, when on a shoot, I always carry at least two extra batteries to keep from getting too low...

FredKingston said:

If the battery has a meter that can be spoofed by constant charging, and the meter becomes inaccurate, I don't know how the battery in that condition can accurately determine when to turn the battery OFF to keep from draining beyond its recovery threshold...

Click to expand...

Well, the only risk is that the camera may shut down prematurely while the battery still has some charge left. Annoying but not a threat to its lifetime. The question would become how to reset it in that case.

Reset the camera or the battery?

I think the camera would be okay... If the battery drops below it's threshold, supposedly SOME chargers have a boost mode to get passed that threshold, and recover the battery... I don't know that Nikon's chargers have that feature, I rather doubt it. They'd like to sell their high priced batteries.