[SA Chris]

Pentax brand = £50 ish
Unbranded Equivalent off ebay = £12.

Anyone used unbranded ones and had problems? Any other viable alternatives, other than buying a batter grip?

Thanks

[lagerstarfish]

I've used unbranded batteries for both Sony and Canon camcorders. No problems. Life seems comparable with the genuine thing.
With the Sony one I did make the effort to find one that had the right chip in it to communicate with the camera about how much juice is left - I had read reports of Sony camcorders not recognising generic batteries.

[GCW]

I've used generic batteries loads of times and not really had any problems.  As long as you get a decent unbranded one I think preformance is fairly comparable.  Plus you can get 4 instead of one for the same money.

[dave]

i got a cheapo ebay unbranded for the nikon. seems fine. although the D70 battery last so long I never have to use it, and when I do is ue its pretty infrequent so I forget to charge it and hence when I do use it it doesn't hold a charge very well. probably my fault for not cycling it.

if you want to play the halfway house between big brand an unbranded you can often get semi-respectable named batteries (like Hahnel etc) that have warranties for a price in between the above two examples.

[SA Chris]

Will look into that, cheers dave. It looks like a new Battery (DLI-90) is fairly new, so not many non Pentax versions of it out there yet.

And thanks everyone else.

[Adam Lincoln]

Never had any problems with the ones i have bought both for my Camcorder and SLR.

[SA Chris]

Just been looking for Hahnel Batteries. The only one I can find costs more than the Pentax one!

[Adam Lincoln]

Just bought another 2 unbranded ones off Ebay for my D200, i will report back here.

[benpritch]

might be worth looking at warranty implications as if i were to use unbranded batteries in my video camera (sony ex 1) the warranty would no longer be valid. no idea how they would find out though, but this thing logs everything else i do with it so who knows?

[SA Chris]

Random question, kind of related.

If you get a rechargeabe camera battery wet with sea water doing somthing stupid like dropping it in a rockpool for example, should it affect the performance? One of the terminals got a bit of green oxidisation on if, but I scraped it off.

Thanks

[highrepute]

I'd use a voltmeter to check the voltage on it.

Then try charging it up. Check the voltage again and it should have gone up.

Wait a day and check voltage again. Should be the same as after it charged. If it's holding charge then I'd say it was ok.

Ideally you compare this to another battery.

I guess the other risk is that i leaks battery fluid into your camera, but i don't know anything about that.

Sorry this doesn't directly answer your question.

[SA Chris]

I've been using it on and off, it seems to lose charge a fair bit faster, but hard to tell. Seems to be fully sealed so hopefully nothing getting in or out.

[tomtom]

Leave it in a bag of rice overnight to make sure its fully dried.

Basmati best  - risotto goes a bit sticky...

[SA Chris]

It happened about a month ago, left in sun on windowsill for a few days when it happened, hopefully dry by now.