My photographer friend, Paul, is always scouting around on the internet looking for photographic bargains. A few weeks ago we were having coffee and discussing the future of photography. I told him that I'd love to just start shooting more and more for myself and that I'd probably get rid of everything but the Leicas and, even in that space, I'd only want to keep the ones that all use the same type of battery. Those would be the SL, the SL2 and the Q2. I did mention that I'd love a few more batteries but that I find them to be dreadfully expensive...
So, over the weekend I got a call from him and he told me he'd located and purchased two slightly used Leica BPSCL4 batteries. He bought them from someone who dived into the Leica SL system and then lunged right back out again. All the guy had left to sell were two almost brand new batteries for his now departed camera.
Price check on aisle five! The current new price for these batteries in the USA is right around $285 each. Two would run $570.
The two batteries Paul got were priced at $320 for the pair. I asked him if he was interested in selling both or if he was interested in keeping one of them to use with his own SL. He told me he already had a couple backups and offered them to me; if I wanted them. Which, of course, I did.
The original seller was someone Paul had done business with before and trusted. Trust but verify says I. I put them onto Nitecore chargers that both charge and read out the condition of the batteries. Both are as advertised. Pretty much as brand new.
Feeling good about getting more batteries! Feeling even better about saving $250 into the bargain.
Why more batteries? Because I hate having to charge batteries in a hotel room every night while traveling. Especially batteries that take three or four hours to fully charge up from zilch. I figure I need three batteries per camera on a long, extended shooting day. That's 3X battery baby-sitting each night. More fun just to have enough batteries to go for days without the hassle.
Also, when it comes to video projects the SL2 performs best when it's got fresh batteries. I like to keep feeding it fresh batteries if I'm using it on a 4K adventure. Nice if you can swing it but more battery intensive than it should be...
Sadly, if you look at the overall configuration of the battery dress and the electrical specs you could be forgiven for thinking this is a repackaged Panasonic S battery with a weather seal and a fancy interlock. And you can pick up Panasonic batteries all day long for about $65. But if you are spending money on Leica gear it's a bit churlish to whine about the price of accessories.
Happy day. New batteries. Unlocking more potential uninterrupted shooting time for me. Sorry, no links.
6 comments:
Please ask Paul to find me a good used Panasonic GH9 body.
Eric
It may or may not fit into the way you do things, but since your nightcore charger is USB based, one option would be to include a powerbank in your camera bag. When one battery is exhausted, just change the battery to a fresh battery, and plug the battery into the Nightcore and then into a powerbank.
I have 2 powerbanks that have a USA style fold out plug that I can charge up the powerbank in the hotel room. By charging on the fly during the day, it might prevent you from needing larger stockpiles of batteries and having to charge all of them overnight.
My smaller power bank (ENEGON, 55 watt/hour, 15000mAh) could probably charge 3, maybe 4 of your Leica batteries. My larger power bank (Idmix, 75 watt/hour, 20000mAh) could probably charge 5 of your Leica batteries before running out of charge.
I tend to like the smaller power bank because it has a digital display, while the larger power bank just has 4 LEDs.
There are various trade offs in using a power bank during the day, but if you need the power, you need the power. My personal record is needing 10-12 batteries during a day with 2 cameras when I was a renaissance faire photographer doing about 1,000 stills and 6 hours of video during the 8 hour day. While I no longer do that type of recording, it has caused me to go into the rabbit hole of remote power during the day.
If you are as crazy as I was, and you are doing video of shows where you don't want to run out of power there are other strategies like using dummy batteries.
With newer cameras like my OM-1 you can now hook up a power bank to the camera and it will charge the batteries and power the camera at the same time using USB C PD power delivery. In general this is can be a problem for stills, but for a fully fleshed out video right you might not notice the extra power bank.
I did some back of the envelope calculations, and I figured I might be able to power the OM-1 continuously for about 11 hours (2 hours for video with the camera battery, and 9 hours with the power bank). I could add the battery grip to go to 13 hours. The camera will last that long, but I suspect I wouldn't.
That should be G9 -- duh
Eric, sadly Paul only scavenges for stuff he might like or use. To my knowledge he's never used anything smaller than full frame and generally very few cameras that don't seep in from Germany... He does make an exception for Nikon D850s. But only as a specialty item for use with tilt/shift lenses....
He originally bought these batteries for potential use in a Leica SL but realized how much I needed to add two more batteries to my collection.
Ah. Friends.
I ordered the Q2 Travel Kit which includes a second Leica battery at steep discount. It's supposed to arrive today. I'm about set for all other Q2 accessories - which is a good thing.
I hope you like yours as much as I like mine. It's an amazing camera. Lucky man...
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