Nikon Battery for D200

Hi all,

I have a quick question about a Nikon D200 battery I have inherited from my dad. He didn't have a spare battery charger so I ended up buying a 3rd party one from ebay for £5. Now when I fully charge the battery (the battery is the official Nikon one with the hologram on it) and it usually takes about 4-5 hours to charge, the battery info menu on the camera displays a 0 below the % charge, which shows it is a brand new battery, which I don't think is right coz I am pretty sure my dad used this battery. My first question is, how accurate is the 0-4 rating to show whether it is new or needs replacing? The first charge only lasted about 250 shots, some with flash, all of them set to Large JPEG, the 2nd charge I gave it lasted about 400 shots, but with the 2nd charge I noticed the battery got down to about 30% and then a few minutes later I had the flashing battery icon on the LCD, which to me must mean either the battery needs replacing or it is not receiving a full charge from the 3rd party charger? I went with the cheap charger as I thought that I would rather spend money on official Nikon batteries as the charger is only supplying electricity to them. I have the battery grip on the camera so I am going to go for a 2nd battery once my wallet recovers from Christmas!

Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Jamie.

Seriously....do yourself a favour....get the Nikon charger. It was designed to work with the genuine Nikon batteries, which are "chipped" to work in your camera. The third party chargers do not have the chip technology built into them that properly charges your Nikon batteries. I learned the hard way, so.....taking this advice is up to you.

While I'm at it.....don't use 3rd party batteries in your gripped D200. They don't have the chip in them that gives the camera the info it needs.

I've found my menu battery info to be quite accurate. Others may vary.

I also don't let my batteries get lower than 30%. I have two in my grip and carry two with me on a shoot.

With my D200 I only get 250-300 shots from a charge yet the D700 with the same battery I will get up to 750-800. The D200's CCD sensor uses more juice. The D700 & the rest of Nikon Bodies have CMOSS sensors which use considerably less juice. So no I don't think it's your charger.

I have noticed the D200 does go through batteries very quickly
I use 2 genuine Nikon batteries and a genuine charger although I do have 2 generic batteries for emergenciesot used yet) but always with a Nikon charger

I would buy a Nikon charger to be safe. I'm not convinced these "oriental" electronic products from Ebay are 100% safe
I've known mobile phone chargers to literally melt and mobile batteries to expand and leak

Leaving the batteries in camera will slowly drain them, so if you don't use your camera for a few days, let's say.....it will drain them quite quickly. After every shoot I take my batteries out and just let them sit on my desk.
I get about 500+ shots from one battery, so I'm not complaining.