Prepare a New Battery

Many places have boxing week sales. I needed another spare battery. I'm in Canada and they charge an arm, a leg and even a second leg for the Canon LP-E6 battery. Why are they so expensive? Because they can and higher capacity with a small CPU inside the battery to monitor/manage the battery. They are almost twice as expensive in Canada as in the US. Some drugstore that also sells cameras had a 15% off sale on camera batteries. 15% is only slightly more than the sales taxes we have in Vancouver, British Columbia. But it's significant enough, so I bought the battery.

The LP-E6 battery is a lithium-ion battery. There are some nice things about these batteries, like they don't have a memory, they can have a higher capacity and they are lighter. There are also big, huge problems with the lithium-ion batteries, such as very limited number of charges, temperature…

Problems with the lithium-ion batteries

1. The biggest problem with the lithium ion batteries is the number of charges. Only 500 full charges and that's it¹!
2. Poor shelf-life. Lithium-ion batteries lose around 5 to 10% per month.
3. A lithium-ion battery that is completely discharged is dead and cannot be revived.
4. Not only like all batteries, lithium-ion batteries lose power in the cold, the lithium-ion batteries also lose power in the heat, around 25% at 40°Celsius or 104°Fahrenheit.

How to prime your battery to get the longest life possible

• Many people have different ways of priming their batteries. We are discussing my religion is better than your religion. Your religion is better than my religion.
• There's no just one way. I can't call the debunking unit, I don't have the actual testing equipment.
• All lithium-ion batteries, including Canon LP-E6 for the Canon 5dMk2 and the Canon 7D, have a built-in voltage monitoring circuit that constantly discharge the battery.