Fee ling a bit flat
Q I’ve noticed that the rechargeable lithium-ion battery in my SLR doesn’t seem to last as long as it used to. Do they have a shelf-life? Simon Harvey
Andrew says Anything man-made will eventually wear out, and Li-ion batteries are no exception. It’s impossible to put a specific life-span on them, though, as it will depend on many different factors.
To put it into some sort of context, I have two batteries from a digital SLR that is over eight years old and they work okay, although admittedly I’m not regularly using that camera any more. However, I also had one battery completely fail on me; not even the kiss of life brought it back from the dead. As a general rule, with regular use you should expect at least a two- to three-year life span for your battery.
I’ve known new camera batteries that seem to quickly develop a fault and insist they’ve run out of power even though they are completely charged. In these instances you need to go back to the seller, because they are clearly faulty.
If you are experiencing problems with yours but it’s not new, make sure first that the contacts are clean. Dirt or some kind of corrosion could be the problem. Dirt is relatively easy to fix with a quick clean. If you spend a lot of time shooting at the coast, you only need to get a little bit of salt spray onto the battery while changing it for the salt to corrode the contacts enough to prevent proper charging.
If there are no obvious issues but the battery is still losing charge very quickly, replace it. Once they start to lose charge quickly, I don’t trust them any more.