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Hack 14 Stay in Charge of Your Batteries
The Achilles heel of digital cameras is that they need power ? lots of it. But what do
you do when you're in the middle of nowhere and you want to keep shooting?
I'm going to start out by saying that you should always have an extra battery on hand.
Digital cameras are power-hungry beasts that behave only as long as you feed their
insatiable appetite for electricity. Once the juice runs out, they're about as useful as the box
they came in.
When you're traveling, be sure to take your charger and extra battery with you. Each night,
put the battery you've been using all day in the charger and put the spare in the camera.
Then, when you take off the next morning, pull the freshly charged battery out of the
charger and put it in your camera bag. Continue this rotation throughout the trip.
If you have a particularly demanding shooting day, that extra battery will be as welcome as
the Calvary when the first one fails. Just remember to charge both once you return to the
room.
1.15.1 Car Chargers for Road Trips
The previous routine should work great for 90% of your travels. But what do you do on
extended road trips and hikes in the backcountry, when an electrical outlet isn't right there
beside your bed at night? You could take enough extra batteries to last the entire trip. If you
figure one cell a day, you're probably safe, with a little discipline. My problem is that I always
want to review my images at night, and that uses battery power. So I find that the
one-cell-a-day regimen is a little stringent for my diet. Not to mention that most
rechargeable Lithium batteries cost US$50 or more each.
Car travelers have a great alternative. Almost every camera manufacturer makes a
cigarette-lighter attachment for their chargers, as shown in Figure 1-15 . Your
charge-and-use routine is a little different when using these tools. Instead of recharging at
night, while you sleep, you charge up during the day, while you're driving. The trick to car
chargers is to use them while the engine is running; otherwise, you'll drain your car battery.
Running out of juice for your camera is one thing, but a dead car battery is a whole new level
of distress.
Figure 1-15. Cigarette adapter for car charger
Once you get your routine down, you can span the entire country with just two camera
batteries and your car charger. If, for some reason, your camera doesn't have an optional
car-charger accessory, all is not lost. Every electronics store carries DC to AC inverters that
will also do the trick. You plug the inverter into your cigarette-lighter socket and plug your
regular battery charger into the inverter. Yes, this system is a tad more bulky than the
dedicated car charger, but it works just as well.
1.15.2 Solar Chargers in the Middle of Nowhere
If you plan on spending some extended quality time with Mother Nature, you'll discover that it's
much easier to recharge your mind, body, and soul than it is to recharge your digicam. This is
the most challenging scenario.
Solar cells have become more efficient and definitely more portable in recent years. One
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