| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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As for the original question, avoid excessively optimistic claims for capacity, they are rarely reliable or sufficiently long lived, as Eric says, buy two batteries if the price allows. That's what I have done with the EN-EL4 batteries, I see little difference in performance between Nikon or third party batteries. Remember, there are not many manufactures of the actual cells. Nikon does not make the cells themselves, the Nikon batteries I have taken apart have as best I recall, had Samsung cells. Samsung and Panasonic are the main ones I think, there are knockoffs but they will be significantly cheaper and are largely to be avoided. The important bit is the membrane sack which contains the electrolyte, to increase the battery capacity, that membrane has to be made thinner, as a rule cheap, thin thin membrane leaks and that can cause short charge retention timescale and excessive leakage can cause overheating and even fire.
The better Eneloop and Fujitsu batteries use high quality very thin and leak resistant membrane, which is expensive, but provides long shelf life and good capacity. As usual it's a trade off situation.
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Robert.