The Reverend Uncle Dick's Hour Of Power...with Toshiba and Powerex

Mah Frens, Ah can hear you out there a'groaning under the weight of sin! Ah can hear you a'groaning under the wait for your electronic flash to charge up!

You-all will have to cope with the former as best you can ( Hint: Adjust the sin so that it hangs evenly over the  shoulders from the front to the back.) but Ah can relieve you of your sorrow with the latter.

If'n you want the fastest solution to the problem, git the Toshiba AA batteries. They are cheap - $ 2.40 for two - and will generally fire off about 150 shots in a standard electronic speed-light. But sometimes they go for much longer - Ah fired mah Fujifilm EF-42 flash about 315 times last Sunday and the batteries still have power.

If you-all want to save money in the long run, you can git the Powerex rechargeable cells in either 2700 mAh or 2400mAh. You'll have to ask Ernest why they are different but they all work pretty well and you can just keep putting electricity into them between jobs. Powerex make big ol' chargers too.

Avoid the cheapie 300-packs that you can get in Woolies and $2 shops. They have abou as much electricity in them as a lightnin' bug on a string and if they leak in your flash you are in real trouble.

Which leads me to Mah next sermon...

Charge Up Your Life With Powerex

I have finally understood the difference between two types of rechargeable batteries that we sell. No, I don't mean charged vs flat - I've understood that for a long time and generally had my knowledge re-inforced whenever I was in the middle of an important shoot. Hence I always take a bag of spare batteries...

No, the difference with the Powerex batteries was explained to me by our service manager. He pointed out that there were two capacities - 2700 mAh and 2400 mAh. I had always assumed that this was just a division into more or less capacity.

So it is, but he explained that the 2700 version carried that extra electricity at the cost of a drop in potential over time - you find it if the battery is charged up full but untouched after that. A month later might see the charge down by 30%. And on and on.

The 2400 version, on the other hand, has a different construction inside and can be relied on to keep 90% of a full charge over six months.

So the question that we should be asking the customers is whether their battery usage will be heavy and constant or intermittent and long-spaced. Choose your weapon.

Note that the Powerex chargers also come in various types, from simple 4-cell ones to 8-cell structures that condition and analyse the batteries. There are also one-hour chargers.