Santa made it today.

[mn shutterbug]

UPS delivered my 30D and 100-400 lens today. What a monster, at least compared to my Panasonic. I inserted the battery and CF card, turned it on, aimed it out the window, and wow, did it focus fast. I haven't actuated the shutter yet. I have a lot of reading to do. I do have one question. Of course it came with just one battery. Does it hurt to recharge the battery when it's still got a half a charge? I haven't checked the price of batteries, but I assume they're not cheap.

Canoga Camera were great to deal with. All they talked me into, along with the lens, was a UV filter. I used to always have sky filters on my lenses for my 35mm Nikons and I figured for the $$$$ I spent on this lens, it's cheap insurance. Also, the owner's wife called me a couple hours after the purchase to thank me and verify the address. I'll deal with them again.

[Grandpaw]

Congratulations on the new camera and lens. You mentioned it here but if you get time put something in the "Camera Dealer Feedback" forum about the dealer you used, Jeff

[mjs1973]

Congrats on the new toys!! From what I remember reading, the lithium batteries don't have "memory" issues so it's ok to recharge them any time. I'm going from memory, so you should double check that.

The Canon batteries are pretty expensive, and some will tell you that you should ONLY use the Canon batteries. I have 4 batteries for my camera, and only one is a Canon. The other three are a brand called CTA. One of them came in the kit that I bought, and I purchased 3 more from Overstocks.com for about $15 each. One of those three died after a couple months, but the others are still going strong. I will continue to buy the CTA batteries if I find that I need more in the future. If you don't trust the CTA batteries, I have seen other brands available at Best Buy for around $45-50.

[readingr]

With lithium batteries - its ok to recharge them at any time but from time to time run them low.


As for other peoples batteries - you need to make sure that the Ah is the same as the Canon version because the Canon charger cannot cope with the higher rated batteries. I have now purchased a new charger which copes with the higher rated ones and it all works fine.

On my 5D and Powershot Pro 1 the battery does 450-500 shots before recharging required. I used one battery for Mike's daughters wedding 530 shots RAW+L JPEG. !0Gb of data on 5 cards and 5 sets of 4xAA for the flash gun.

Roger

Roger

[mn shutterbug]

Thanks for the info, guys. However, a couple photographers from another forum turned me on to this site. http://sterlingtek.com/index.html These batteries are only $11.99. I've been told that they actually hold a charge longer than the Canon batteries and last for years. For that price, I can afford a couple.