Digital Camera Batteries

If you are looking to buy a new digital camera, should you take the battery type into consideration? If you've already bought your camera then the decision has already been made.

Let's assume you have already bought you digital camera and it takes a proprietary battery - a battery that is made by the manufacturer specifically for your camera or similar models. What options do you have? Well the short answer would be none. However, My advice to you is, buy a spare battery and keep it charged. You should have  got a charger bundled with the camera. 

, mostly made from a substance called Lithium Ion, can be expensive, but they are rechargeable and will last a lot longer then normal alkaline batteries. You can still get caught out with flat batteries, though! It happened to me. I carry two proprietary lithium ion batteries with my Nikon Coolpix 7900; one in the camera an one in my Loewpro D-Res camera pouch. The battery in my camera was low, but that was ok, (or so I thought) because I knew I had a spare. When the battery eventually died I swapped them over. The trouble was, the spare was flat too. I forgot to take it out of my camera pouch to re-charge it the last time I used it. If my camera took AA size batteries, I could have just popped into a shop and bought a pack or borrowed a couple of batteries from a friend.

However, two advantage of having a digital camera that takes thin Lithium Ion batteries is the small size and light weight.

, should you consider what type of battery the camera takes before you buy it? Well, yes, I think you should, but it all depends on what you are looking for in a camera.

If you're looking for a small camera such as the Canon Digital ELPH that you can stick in your pocket or handbag, then you may be limited to cameras that take Lithium Ion proprietary batteries as these are usually flat which helps keep the camera small. But if you are looking for a standard size compact digital camera or larger you have the choice to go for a camera that takes flat proprietary batteries which you will have to charge, and you will probably need to buy a spare, or a camera that can take standard AA sized batteries. Some cameras that take 2 AA batteries can also take a longer lasting CR-V3 battery. If you go for the AA size option, you could use quality alkaline batteries which are readily available, high capacity NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) rechargeable batteries or even very long lasting, but non-rechargeable Lithium batteries. One benefit of going down the AA path is, if your rechargeable batteries go flat you can pop into a shop and buy normal alkaline batteries to keep you going.  Lithium batteries are becoming more readily available and cheaper. Plus they are much lighter that alkaline batteries too. The choice is yours.

Find out more about the types of batteries for digital cameras here.