Charging 3rd party batteries with 5D charger

[soboyle www.oboylephoto.co]

I have a few 1450 mAh li-ion batteries that I bought for my 20D, and

they recharged fine using the 20D battery charger. With the 5D

charger they will not charge, they indicate full charged by the

charger, but are in fact fully drained.

Anyone having a similar issue with the 5D charger?

[soboyle www.oboylephoto.co]

Come to think of it, it was the 10D charger I was using to charge the 3rd party BP511 compatible batteries, not the 20D charger. There has been some change to the chargers over the last 3 generations, because it worked then, it doesnt now.

[bobatkins]

The 20D charger works just fine with 3rd party batteries, at least mine does.

 

I'm sure if Canon could come up with a way to detect 3rd party batteries, they'd disable the ability to charge them. They want to sell you Canon batteries and could always say that 3rd paty batteries are dangerous and you shouldn't use them (in fact they do say that).

[bennyboy]

3rd party batteries will charge using my 350D charger, but instead of a green light showing when fully charged, the lamp goes out. I think this may be to do with trickle charge circuitry being absent in cheaper batteries perhaps?

[soboyle www.oboylephoto.co]

When I pop either of my 2 3rd party batteries into the 5D charger, it quickly goes thru the flashing red light sequences, then the red light stays lit, like its done charging. I've tried leaving it on the charger but it doesn't charge at all. To bad, because these 3rd party batteries have more capacity than the canon batteries.

[rdkirk]

This winds up being the same situation as with lenses, but less likely.

 

For Canon to come up with a scheme to disable charging 3rd party BP-511/512 batteries in the 5D charger, it would have already had to be built into all the BP-511/512 batteries Canon has already sold.

 

I can't imagine that batteries are THAT difficult to reverse engineer.

 

Of course, Canon doesn't manufacture batteries anyway, so we're talking about a 3rd party company that brands a small portion of its total run "Canon" and the rest something else.

[soboyle www.oboylephoto.co]

Any recommendations for 3rd party batteries that do definitely work with the 5D charger? Perhaps my older ones are at the end of their life.

[kin_lau]

My charger for the 300D (uses the same BP-511) works just fine with 3rd party batteries.

 

I also bought a 3rd party travel charger by Optex that will charge about 100 different kinds of batteries, and it works on BP-511's & HB-2L's (350D).

[mike dixon]

I've had no trouble charging 3rd-party batteries with my 5D charger. The battery's less than a year old; don't recall the brand, though.

[phoneguy]

Are they sterlingtek? They sell their chargers for about $15. You can use it with 120v, or 12v car. All for $15...Very cheap, very good service.

 

Mike

[tommyinca]

I been using this generic one (from Adorama) on my 5D charger/5D since day 1, no issues (many charge cycle has gone by).<div></div>