BootsnAll Travel Community

For those of you who brought a digital cam on your trip, did you use one that took standard AA (or standard camera battery) or a rechargeable battery?

Which would you recommend? Any horror stories from either (ie. running out of juice on a rechargeable, or not being able to find replacements)?

Thanks in advance!

I haven't done any international travelling since I bought my digicam, but I did travel around Canada for 7 months. I've been very pleased with my AA setup. I use rechargeable Ni-MH AAs, which last pretty much forever (I found I could take about 100 photos, plus me and my roomates randomly going through what I already had). I figure this is the best of both worlds, since when I'm on the road next year, if I need more batteries, I can just pick up some cheap single use AAs.

My mother has a very similar camera to mine, except hers uses a proprietary rechargeable, and it seems to need to be recharged more often.

I figure for travel your best with AAs, otherwise you have to buy (and lug around) a transformer, or else buy a new charger for every power system you encounter (unless you're extra luck and find a camera that comes with a dual-voltage charger)

It depends on your photographic behavior...if you're a shutterbug like me, battery power is definitely an issue. Recently I bought a smaller digital camera that accepts rechargable AAAs; the batteries last a long time, and the worst case scenario is, if I run out of power and have no spare rechargable AAAs on me, I just buy some AAAs at a store instead of worrying about getting back to my hostel to charge up. (In some cases, you won't even have this second option at the time.)

e.

http://www.theglobaltrip.com

If you go RTW with a camera that needs recharging, bear in mind that you'll need a different transformer for each area you go to!

AAs can be bought and charged everywhere, that's what I'm planning to take.

Chris

Just wanted to put in my 2 cents in favor of the rechargeable batteries...

1. I'd feel guilty (environmentally speaking) about using all those AA/AAA batteries.
2. In touristy places, these batteries can cost 2-3 times as much as they should.
3. You can buy rechargeable batteries that last twice as long as the proprietary ones that come with the camera.
4. I bought a backup rechargeable battery and it came in handy many times.
5. My recharger is dual voltage so I don't need a transformer.
6. You still need adapters but I've found multi-country adapters are quite common (in the US and other countries). You can pick up RTW adapters for a few dollars that will let you plug in almost anywhere else in teh world
7. And if your recahrgeable battery low indicator does go on, you can try shutting down all non-essential features on your camera like the LCD display, sounds etc and not taking video clips. From my experience, this goes a LONG way.
8. If you still run out of battery, well just enjoy the moment and try to capture it in your memory!

I just got a little Canon digital camera which is very handy. It chews through batteries and I just bought a charger with re-useable batteries. I feel much better about this and it will be a huge money saver.

I take a pack of Duracells with me too just in case.

My charger is a German thing that takes 4 AAA's and I can leave it plugged in all the time. The manufacturers say the batteries have no memory and I don't have to run them completely down before re charging them.

Nick O'Neill
http://www.BaliBlog.com
BootsnAll's guide to Bali

I´m on a 2 year RTW with my Dig Cam.

I was in a great position in my last job where I had access to endless supplies of batteries. I therefore proceeded to ´borrow´ a few packs of AA´s here and there for the trip. I ended up with about 20 boxes of 10. I just emptied them out into the internal zipped pocked of my pack and off I went.

I did have a thought that it would be ridiculously heavy but its not! (Either that or I have unknowingly become ultra strong lugging my pack around all the time). They don´t get in the way as they have a nack of fitting in between all the other bits in the pocket!

Just my two peneth. My advice is to bring as many with you as you can - its not as if you wont use them, right!

Con.