Photography Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional, enthusiast and amateur photographers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have a Nikon CoolPix L26 digital camera and am using the rechargable battery that came along with it. It is a 1.2V / 2100 mAH battery (Infinite brand)
Even when I fully recharge the battery and use it with my camera, I can hardly use it.
The camera just switches ON and turns OFF within 2-3 seconds.
Is there something wrong with the battery? I am beginning to worry about the mAH specs...Do I need still higher mAH battery ?
The problem may be the voltage rather than the mAH. A standard AA is 1.5 volts. If your battery is only providing 1.2 volts, it may be insufficient voltage for the circuitry to operate on.
You could always test the camera with a fresh pair of AA alkaline batteries. If the camera operates fine in that scenario, then the problem is most likely the batteries that came with your camera. If the camera still demonstrates the issue, then something else is going on.
Assuming the camera is okay, I would try another set of rechargeable batteries, preferably made by a major manufacturer. With AA batteries there are just too many generics out there that don't perform as well. Just because a battery is rated at 2100 mAh doesn't mean it is performing at 2100 mAh! And even the best rechargeable batteries have a limited life cycle and will eventually need to be replaced. Be sure to follow recommended practice and charge a new set the first time for at least 6-8 hours, even if the light on the charger indicates it is fully charged after a couple of hours. It takes several charge/discharge cycles for most types of rechargeable batteries to reach full capacity.
I'm resurrecting this topic because I recently got one of these cameras from someone. I had the same problem.
The long story:
As I figured out, the problem is not the actual batteries.
I tried NiMHs fully charged and got the low battery error.
I tried new AA Alkalines and they only worked for a few pics.
Things to note (possibilities of problems):
So I took things step by step.
I checked the contacts and there were in very good shape, powerful pressing on batteries so arcs or insufficient current was excluded.
I checked the internal settings and made sure that the setting is for Alkalines when I used Alkalines.
Since the above did not solve it, only one thing remained: the internal battery. The clock reset upon changing batteries was an indicator of this. The original owner confirmed that he did not use the camera for a long time, so that confirmed my hypothesis. Then the problem was that the internal battery is relatively hard to reach and an inexperienced person with precision disassembly may break things. So I decided not to open it. I took the best Alkalines I had fully charged brand new at 1.6V and let them in the camera for a few days. After a few days, I was able to take over 100 pics without any error. Then, the error came back. The Alkalines were still at around 90% indicator. After a few more days of doing nothing, it started to work again and I was able to make more pictures with no error.
Conclusion: the internal battery re-charged slowly from the normal Alkalines until it reached a sufficient level to cause no more errors.
So the fix, if contacts and settings are both fine, is to let new Alkalines in there for a while (a few days) for the internal battery to recharge or, in the case or rechargeable batteries, let them connected to charger while inside about 3h more than the duration of a normal charge.
