You simply gotta have power to run our babies! There was a time when with the first DSLRs of fifteen years ago you had to switch out the battery every time you switch CF Cards (and those were 64MB cards!). Those days are long gone, thank goodness!!! But there are times when our ability to charge our batteries can be the challenge. On my recent trip to Africa, I just didn’t know what power we’d have for charging batteries so I took extra batteries. I’ve had a lot of you have asked about off brand batteries. As you might have figured, I’m a “stick with the brand” kinda guy so have always stuck with the Nikon EN-EL18A to power my D4s. Well I had a sample of the Watson D4 battery come in and figured this was the perfect time to do a true field test and as it turned out, a stress test field test!
The EN-EL18a is a 10.8V, 2500mAh battery that has served me brilliantly! The Watson is a 10.8V, 2600mAh which by specs is a tad better. Now in Africa, our “power” was from an inverter connected to a battery being charged at times by the sun. Talk about a stress test! This is not the best of charging scenarios cause you just never know if it’s the right amount of juice consistently being feed to the system. Now shooting just stills really doesn’t stress a battery. Shooting video is when you can see the battery drain it seems by the minute (figure of speech). Well, I shot basically the entire time on the Watson and it an absolutely beautiful job! It’s not what I was expecting so I was pleasantly surprised. I still use the Nikon but this is a viable option.
You might be wondering about the end cap in the photo. Yep, I use them and for all the right reasons. You just never know where you’ll dump the battery and what it might come in contact with. So for that very simple reason, I always have the came on my spare. Hope this trivia helps.