Availability of batteries

I have been using a couple of digicams that use AA batteries. I

recently acquired the Konica Minolta Dimage Xg which uses its own

battery design. I am now worried that the useful life of a digital

camera is limited by the availability of its battery. Are these

battery designs standardized and are any manufacturers commiting

themselves to perpetual availability? AA and AAA batteries are pretty

much perpetual but I understand there are technical considerations in

not using them, weight for example.

I doubt we'll know the answer to your question until we can't get batteries! My guess is that once a couple manufacturers have tooled up for a special battery, they'll sell them as long as there's some demand. I don't know about the Konica Minolta, but the major battery players are OEM, Lenmar, and maybe Energizer (they have data sheets, but I haven't seen the batteries yet). There are probably a couple others. Hopefully after we have a few dozen battery types, manufacturers can design with what they have, and stop introducing new battery shapes with every camera! We don't seem to have reached that point, and I don't know if there's any effort to standardize. Lithium ion batteries are said to be good for up to 500 use/recharge cycles, so it shouldn't take too many batteries before you have to worry about the camera giving up as well.

Keep in mind some practical realities also. I've often heard people get worried when they

hear that a Lithium-Ion battery will give up after 500 cycles. Remember that in most

cameras, each full charge cycle should net you 200-300 exposures, so that 500 charges is

at least 100,000 exposures.

 

For most people, this means that the battery will effectively last forever, or outlive the

mechanical life of the camera (it's very rare that a camera shutter is rated for 100,000 or

more cycles). Equating it to 35mm film terms, 100,000 exposures is the equal of about

2700 rolls of 36 exposure film. That's a lot of pictures...

 

Godfrey

I've never seen any complaints of battery non-availability on the digital forums I follow. I'd agree it seems to not be something to worry much about. The only battery problems that I'm aware of are the ones involving some of the small mercury (or ??) batteries that were discontinued/disallowed for environmental reasons and even these have had successful workarounds or replacements developed.

I have an earlier Dimage X, with a couple batteries. These tiny Li-Ion batteries don't last any where near 300 shots, or even 100 shots. Probably closer to 50 in normal situations. I've had the Camera for a bit over a year, and the batteries are showing signs of not holding a charge and going dead prematurely. I'm now looking at buying a couple of new batteries for it. I see that on Ebay, you can get generic replacements for it for about $10.

 

I think your question is valid, HC, the life of this little jewel is likely to be prematurely limited by the life and availability of the batteries. But then, no one said that any digital camera would have the expected life span of a Leica.

These dedicated batteries also reduce convenience. For example, if you are going to an important event and at the last minute you realize you had forgotten to charge the battery overnight, well that's pretty much it. OTOH if the digicam takes AA batteries, you can always get some at the convenience store on the way to the event.