All about Nikon D1, D1X, and D1H Batteries

Discharge early and often!

But what is Too often?

Keeping track of your batteries

When do you switch batteries?

Carrying your Batteries

You might think that with only one supported battery for the D1 family of cameras, the Nikon EN-4, things would be simple.

But they're not. Batteries and battery lore generate nearly as much discussion on the D1 lists as image quality. This article will help you know what you need to know about using your batteries correctly and productively.

The Nikon EN-4 rechargeable NiMH battery

The pricey EN-4 battery is the only one that Nikon supports for the D1. Unless you are lucky enough to be able to plug your camera into a power supply it is probably how you will power your camera. There are external battery packs from other vendors but they are not covered here.

For those of us used to Lithium batteries in our PCs, phones, and digital video camcorders, NiMH is a large and unfortunate step backwards. NiMH has three major disadvantages: First it has a "memory effect" so that it needs fairly frequent deep discharge cycles to function at full capacity. Second, charges deteriorate, so if you leave your batteries alone for a few days they will have lost much of their charge. Third, it is very hard to accurately meter NiMH batteries, which explains why the D1 family meters are a little random in their behavior.

Additionally, the deep discharge requirement means that we need to carry around the bulky and expensive Nikon MH-16 quick charger. The car charger is a convenient alternative but it does not offer the deep discharge feature.

So what does this mean to us?

Discharge early and often!

First, deep cycle (charge and then deep-discharge) your new EN-4 batteries 3-5 times after purchase. If you don't you will only get a fraction of the possible image captures from it. If you didn't do it right away when you got the battery, do it now. It's never too late!

From then on  you probably want to deep discharge your batteries every 10 charges or so, and at least once per month. Personally I have found once per month not to be often enough to maintain peak capacity and am moving to once every three weeks.

Similarly, having too many batteries in your rotation can cause your batteries to sit idle for too long. This tends to cause them to lose some of their charge and then get a "top-off" charge when you're ready to use them. This makes the memory effect a real problem.

But what is Too often?

NiMH batteries are only good for 100-300 charges, and deep discharges definitely wear on the battery. So don't discharge any more often than you think you need to to maintain battery life. Since a full discharge and charge cycle can take 12 hours you probably don't want to be doing it all the time anyway!

Keeping track of your batteries

I do four things to keep track of my batteries.

1. I put a file folder label on the flat side of the battery. So far I've had these labels on batteries for over a year without them falling off. I put a unique number on each label.

2. I write on each battery each date that I deep cycle the battery. I can then easily keep track of when it needs to be cycled next.

3. I leave the end "tab" out on dis-charged batteries. At first it made me nervous the tab might get damaged, but after 18 months nothing has happened to harm any of them.

4. I have my fully charged batteries in one side of my backpack and the dis-charged batteries in the other. This helps make it easy to reach for the right battery when I'm in a hurry.

Other photographers worry about the exact order in which they use batteries. That is probably a great idea, but I'm just not that organized. I just work to make sure that I use each battery before starting to recharge the others--at least when possible.

When do you switch batteries?

With the original D1 Nikon let the battery get quite low before indicating "half full." The camera seemed to get a little flakey after that so the conventional wisdom was to change batteries when they went to half full.

However, in response to plenty of complaints about the D1 surprising people with an empty warning, Nikon has made the battery meter much more sensitive in the D1X and D1H. So you may find that the battery goes to half full very quickly. There is no way around this except to keep shooting. It's a bit of a pain in the neck as the viewfinder display dis-appears if your finger is not on the shutter, but the camera continues to work normally until the battery is nearly empty. At that point it reserves enough power to write all your current images, so it starts getting sporadic in its response to the shutter. That's how you know you really do need to switch batteries!

Carrying your Batteries

This is pretty simple, but there are a couple tips even in this area.

First, if you are placing your batteries somewhere where they will touch metal you'll want to keep the battery cap on them so that they don't short out. Personally I prefer to keep my batteries away from any metal and then don't bother with the caps. They are just too much to worry about when I'm shooting.

Second, as Moose first figured out, the Cellphone pouch from Lowepro makes a great battery holder that can fit on your belt or the strap for your pack.

We hope this helps you get the most out of your batteries!

--David Cardinal