Digital camera battery question

[Kyle]

Hey-
Just picked up a Sony CD1000 Digital camera, and was wondering if the Lithium battery thing that comes with it is the kind with the "Memory". That is, should we always use the camera untill the battery is on empty, and always charge it up to full, or will it matter? With my older camcorder, if we didnt use it to empty and charge till full, the battery life was affected.
Thanks
-Kyle

 

[oneeighty]

<< Power

The MVC-CD1000 comes with a Sony InfoLITHIUM, NP-F550 rechargeable battery to accommodate the higher power drain of the CD-R drive. InfoLITHIUM means that the battery communicates with the camera to let you know how much power is left (displayed on the LCD panel in minutes as well as with a battery icon). If you need to run the camera for longer periods than the battery pack will allow, the supplied AC adapter should do the trick. There's also an auto power-off function which shuts down the camera after three minutes of inactivity. The AC adapter also acts as the battery charger. You simply leave the battery in the camera and plug in the AC adapter. If the camera is switched off, the &quot;Charge&quot; LED will light up (located directly over the power switch).

We love the InfoLITHIUM battery technology, because you know very shortly after turning the camera on exactly how much charge/operating time is left. Overall battery capacity is quite good, and the NP-F550 battery gives very good operating life. Finally, the lithium-ion technology used in the InfoLITHIUM cells means that the batteries don't &quot;self-discharge,&quot; holding their full charge when not in use, for months at a time. Sony estimates that a fully charged NP-F550 will provide approximately 90 minutes of continuous recording time and about 110 minutes of continuous playback. These are good operating times, and better than we had expected, given the power-hungry tendencies of CD-R mechanisms. (Having fairly powerful DC motors and high-current write lasers.) We did note that the CD1000 uses the much higher capacity NP-F550 battery, as compared to the NP-F330 that ships in the FD95. For a lark (ok, we admit that counting trying different batteries as a &quot;lark&quot; is a little strange), we tried an NP-F330 in the CD1000 camera. Apparently a major difference between the F330 and F550 batteries is the latter's ability to handle much higher current drains comfortably: The CD1000 worked reasonably well in playback mode with the lower-capacity battery, but died quite quickly when the CD1000 was recording more or less continuously. (We didn't time it, but it was noteworthy that the high power drain of record mode also fooled the InfoLITHIUM system of the F330, since the battery ran out of juice a lot quicker than it expected to. - We thus strongly recommend against using less-expensive, lower-capacity InfoLITHIUM batteries in the CD1000: You'll get a lot less operating time than you'd be led to expect by the time-remaining readout!) >>



Digital Cameras - Sony Mavica CD1000 Digital Camera Review

 

[Kyle]

Thanks for the link...Im still not sure on the re-charge part. Do I have to let it charge full, or will a partial charge work fine, without hurting the over-all capacity.

 

[Kyle]

bump...

 

[Mark R]

Li-ion batteries are essentially memory free.

Not only that, but the memory effect is caused, not by the batteries capcity falling off, but by their voltage decreasing (so that they trigger the low battery cut-off before they are empty). Use of a microprocessor controlled charge/dischage monitoring system (such as is installed in the Sony InfoLithium batteries) means that the memory effect has no real relevance as the charge going in/out is measured instead of the capacity being inferred from voltage.

I have also found that deep discharging in general is bad for batteries. I did a test with a cell phone, which came with 2 NiCD batteries. One would always be discharged completely before recharging, the other would be topped up as and when required. The one that was topped up, lasted about 9 months, wheras the one that was regularly discharged only lasted 6 months before it couldn't power the phone for a day.

 

[Kyle]

Thanks, exactly the type of answer I was lookin for, good to hear the memory-free thing too.
-Kyle