Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries

[chuck909]

I'm a little embarrassed to ask this, as I have been using Canon F1's since the 2nd iteration came out. Up until now I have been using plain old alkaline batteries in both my motor drive for the old F1 and the newest F1. Same with the power winder. For some reason I have never used these drives with rechargeable Nichel Metal Hydride batteries. Other than a slight voltage difference, is there any reason why I should not use them?

[Ken Katz]

You could ask Canon, but they may not be willing to provide a clear response since NiMH tech was not around when this equipment was developed. I would probably look at lithium batteries if you going to experiment beyond alkaline.

[John Seaman]

I've no experience of this particular drive, but over a period of time I've used Alkaline and rechargeable batteries interchangeably in different winders and both seem to work OK. It probably helps to keep the rechargeables fully charged to maximise the voltage.

[steven_endo]

According to the manual for the Power Winder F, you should not use anything other than AA alkalines. This is because the winder relies on alkalines' low, max current output to stop the winder at the end of the roll.

 

As for the other drives and winder, that is not an issue since they all have reverse counters. BUT, I don't know if the lower voltage/higher current is compatible. Especially in the New F1 since the camera also electrically connects to the drive batteries for Shutter Priority mode.

[awahlster]

Steve is correct if I remember right there can be a problem with tearing the film. I have always just bought Bulk AA alkalines when on sale for my winders etc. NOW in a flash the NMIH is very nice.

[chuck909]

Steve is correct if I remember right there can be a problem with tearing the film. I have always just bought Bulk AA alkalines when on sale for my winders etc. NOW in a flash the NMIH is very nice.

OK, but as the motors for both the F1 and F1N and the winder for the F1N have a count down, is there really a problem? As for flashes, I use the NMIH batteries, too.

 

Then again, 7 times out of 10, I go past the 0 mark anyway.

[Tony-S]

I’ve used NiMH batteries in my F-1N power winder for years and never had problems.

[BeBu Lamar]

I don't think it would be a problem but I doubt that you use your cameras a lot. For low usage NiMH is a poor choice because they have very high self discharge rate.

[chuck909]

I don't think it would be a problem but I doubt that you use your cameras a lot. For low usage NiMH is a poor choice because they have very high self discharge rate.

I'm going to give them a try in my drives. I'm not too worried about the discharge rate as I always carry extras. I've been using them in a Vivitar 365 and Canon 577 for years now without problems.

[christian_irgens]

My (original) F-1 days are long behind me, but I have used different NiMh batteries for many years, mostly in Speedlites. In the beginning I went for max capacity which was good and bad. If you recharged the cells just before a shoot it was good. Then you recharged them after the shoot and two weeks later they were pretty dead. Bad. My more knowledgable friends suggested Eneloops, advice I resisted for a long time. Then I read reviews and specs and I was sold. Have used them for many years now and am very happy. Extremely low self-discharge rate. Also, i have never had a single cell go bad on me. The regular Eneloops are 2,000 mAh while the Pros are 2,500 with a lower recycling lifespan.

 

I tried some 1.5 Volt rechargeable lithium batteries from Amazon. Not a good experience. High internal resistance which led to significant heat buildup. Flash recharge time was never as fast as (regular) Eneloops and after about ten full power pops the recharge time became unusably long. Only item I ever returned to Amazon.

 

While alkaline have a higher nominal voltage than NiMhs they also have higher internal resistance, so the effective voltage unger load is lower. I never tried rechargeables in my F-1, but some of my grips for EOS have optional AA magazines. Going a bit out on a limb here I don't remember Canon advising against NiMhs.

[conrad_hoffman]

The self-discharge of Eneloops is extremely low. Those are all I use.

[chuck909]

The self-discharge of Eneloops is extremely low. Those are all I use.

OK, so you're saying that they perform better than other brands, but It's still a NiMH, right? (I've never heard of this brand). I use mostly Eveready along with their charger. Does the Eneloops need a special charger?

[Tony-S]

Eneloops were made by Sanyo and now Panasonic. They are NiMH.

[JDMvW]

FWIW I use rechargeable batteries in my FD-Mount cameras and they seem to work fine except that the individual charge doesn't last so long as the alkalines.

[glen_h]

I haven't tried one, but there are stories of the Nikon F motor drive being strong enough to crack the spool in the 35mm cassette and pull pieces through the rest of the camera. That would be more likely with the high current that NiCd and NiMH can supply.

[gwhitegeog]

In terms of 'replacements' I think NiMH would be fine - they perform similarly to alkaline. But I'd be tempted to rewind the film manually!

G

[hjoseph7]

Make sure the required Voltage is the same. For example I use Powerex rechargeable batteries which are very well rated, but they only put out 1.2 Volts while regular Alkaline batteries put out 1.5 Volts. I use the rechargeables on my Canon 580EX II speedlight which uses 4 batteries. So if you take that .3 voltage difference from each battery and multiply it by 4, that is a total 1.2 Volts difference from the Alkaline batteries. If yourMotor drive uses 8 batteries then it can become problematic...

Do I notice any difference between the Alkalines and the rechargeables ? YES ! the Alkalines give me more POP and seem to last longer, but then you have to throw them out which can get expensive.     

[ben_hutcherson]

On 7/15/2023 at 6:46 PM, hjoseph7 said:

Make sure the required Voltage is the same. For example I use Powerex rechargeable batteries which are very well rated, but they only put out 1.2 Volts while regular Alkaline batteries put out 1.5 Volts. I use the rechargeables on my Canon 580EX II speedlight which uses 4 batteries. So if you take that .3 voltage difference from each battery and multiply it by 4, that is a total 1.2 Volts difference from the Alkaline batteries. If yourMotor drive uses 8 batteries then it can become problematic...  

1.2V/cell is the standard nominal voltage for nickel battery chemistries.

At issue in a lot of applications is that nickel rechargeable batteries, and actually most rechargeable chemistries in general, tend to have much lower internal resistance than standard alkaline(or carbon-zinc, and even though the latter have their place in my house in certain applications still, I'm hard pressed to think of a photo application in 2023). Lithium primary batteries(the 1.5V/cell disposable ones, not lithium ion rechargeable, which is a different beast) is even higher in internal resistance.

What's at play in many applications is the battery's internal resistance. This is most apparent in photo application when looking at flash recycle time, but can also affect motor drive performance.

To give some real numbers I dug up on the internet-comparing D cell batteries since it's the size I found the most complete list of different chemistries for-a single alkaline cell has a resistance of about 100mΩ at full charge, while an NiMH is 20mΩ. NiCd is better still at 9mΩ, and lead acid comes out on top at 6mΩ(bearing in mind that a D cell lead acid is far from a drop in replacement for an alkaline-the only thing it has in common is the size/shape!). Lithiums, by the way, are about 10x alkaline, while Li-ion is similar to NiMH. Resistance does change as state of charge changes, and just how much depends on the battery chemistry.

Low internal resistance can be thought of as the battery being able to deliver power quickly, but more practically it also gives an idea of how much the voltage will drop when under load.

The lower resistance of rechargeables shows in the real world something that the manuals will all tell us-our flashes, for example, will nearly always recycle faster, often twice as fast if not better, if using NiMH batteries instead of alkalines even though the voltage is lower. Even the plain old Quantum Battery 1, which output 6V and had a cord that could be finagled into an AA battery compartment, would really kick it since the first generation Quantums(1, 2, and Turbo) all use lead acid batteries and the "6V" is an actual 6V(the Quantum Turbo and other equivalent products really do kick it into overdrive since they bypass the internal inverters and just feed high voltage straight to the capacitors).

Where I'm really going with this, though, is Canon offered two different NiCd packs for the F-1 motor drive. The standard one used 2/3AA NiCds, while the "high power" pack had 8 AA NiCd cells. Basically it was just a rechargeable version of the standard 8 cell AA battery pack.

Even though 8 AA NiCd(or NiMH) cells will deliver 9.6V(nominal) as compared to 12V for AA alkalines, the "High Power Pack" would actually boost the frame rate of the motor drive. On alkalines it will run at 4.5fps, and with the High Power pack it will run at 5fps.

In theory, NiMH cells SHOULD be fine in the standard AA holder, but I'll offer one caution/caveat. There's about a dozen pins(maybe not that many, but I think at least 8 or so) that tie the battery pack to the motor drive from what I remember, although it's been a decade probably since I've messed with one. I genuinely don't know this, but it's possible that Canon used a different set of pins to feed voltage from the NiCd pack than from the AA pack. I've recelled probably a dozen of the high power packs-back in college I made good money scouring Ebay for them, recelling, and then selling(I could get $125-150 in those days for a pack, charger, camera battery cable kit, which was good money considering that I was paying $50-75 for dead ones) but it's actually something I never thought to check. It only sort of came to my conscious thought now because of a well known quick/caution on the Metz 45 flashes. Both prebuilt NiCd(and actually NiMH-uncommon but they're out there) and "baskets" for 6AA alkalines are available. Even though the NiCd packs are 6 cells, just like the AA basket, the manual is adamant(as in "all of humanity will cease to exist if you do it" adamant) about not using rechargeables in the standard basket. There are actually 3 battery contacts inside the flash-one is the negative, one is positive for the NiCd pack, and one is positive for the alkaline basket. I've never tried putting rechargeables in an AA basket-I have some pretty junky, need to be put out of their misery, but still working flash guns and might be willing to sacrifice one in the name of science, but there are also posts around the internet about internally rewiring such that you can presumably safely use rechargeables without killing the flash.

Sitting back at my parents house, 300 miles from where I am now, is my LA Olympic New F-1 with a motor drive and my last NiCd pack I rebuilt mounted to it. The next time I'm there, I'll grab and actually properly investigate(and potentially recell it yet again, as the replacements I put in it around 2007/2008 would certainly be getting on in years-plus with a decade and a half more experience rebuilding battery packs and also now with a proper spot welder I can do a much neater job than I did back then soldering tabbed cells together and also not be at the mercy of what I could buy pre-tabbed) but it may be a little while so no promises.

[ben_hutcherson]

Just realized I made a small mistake-

I had 8 cells for the high power pack FN in my head. That's common for a lot of higher speed film cameras-I think that's what the motor for the A-1 uses, and the Nikon F2 motor along with the F5 runs on 8 cells.

After thinking about it and doing some quick checking, I seem to recall that the standard AA pack uses 12 cells. By extension, the High Power Ni-Cd pack would use the same number of cells, and my stash of remaining tabbed cells that i use to keep for rebuilding these(which I use to buy in packs of 8...) would support that number. 

That means that a standard AA pack is going to be 12V, and a rechargeable will be a nominal 9.6. As a side note too, if you pull your nickel rechargeables off the charger and they're less than 1.3V/cell, they're probably bad. A 100% freshly charged cell should be higher thanks to charge build up at the electrodes, but one off the charger an hour or so and unused should be at least 1.3V.