When I was deciding on what digital to buy, I read a lot about batteries. Sadly I can't point you to the article that explained the reason why you can't use alkaline batteries, but in most digitals that use NiMH or Lithium, they go to that sort of battery because of the high amperage drain. Alkalines simply are not designed for heavy drain for any period of time at all. A voltage tester doesn't put the battery under a drain. In actual use, any excessive amperage drain will rapidly deplete the charge, the voltage drops, and the battery becomes essentially useless! Alkaliines are for light to moderate drains. Cameras use a lot of milliamps!
Keep a set for emergency use if you want, but as you've found, "emergency" use doesn't mean you can finish shooting the rest of the wedding, or the last three days of your long awaited vacation! Buy and use the rechargables. They work. Alkalines don't. That's why the owner's manual says to use something else. The engineeers designed around a certain battery type. Believe them. keith whaley Paul Ewins wrote: > > Hi all, > I bought my girlfriend and Optio 230 on eBay and although all the > functions seem to work it seems to have a problem with batteries. It shos > the batteries as being exhausted way too early. The Lithium battery that > came with it gave up after about 25 shots, so she replaced it with a set of > alkalines and they showed up as depleted almost straight away. > She then tried another brand new set of Alkalines and again it stopped > working after about 5 minutes. They show up as fine with a battery tester as > you would expect. > I've put a set of Nimh rechargeables in it and they are OK so far, but would > really like to have the option of using regular Alkaline batteries as well. > I've had similar troubles with the DigiBino 100, but it doesn' like the Nimh > either. > Has anyone had this sort of trouble with any of the Optio range? > > thanks, > > Paul Ewins > Melbourne, Australia
