Gear Friday – Extra Batteries

Happy Friday everyone!

In my younger days a veteran sports photographer in the Detroit area used to give me some tips about shooting sports. Mostly little tricks he'd learned over the years and wasn't afraid to share with a young kid like me. The one that always stuck with me was to bring at least two extra rolls of 36 exposure Tri-X film to every game no matter what. He'd say "sure as I'm standing here kid, if you run out of film before the end of the game the winning touch-down pass will be thrown in the last ten seconds and you're gonna look like a #$%^ idiot for missing the shot".

I've never forgotten that little tip (since I learned it the hard way) and I'd like to pass it along (updated somewhat) to you folks. Your beautiful new D90/50D/D700/5D MK II won't do you a lick of good if the battery dies in the middle of a shoot. Keep in mind that your DSLR's wonderfully sharp LCD and auto-focus / image-stabilized lenses can drain a battery dry in just a few hours of continuous use.

The very FIRST accessory you should buy NO MATTER WHAT, is an extra battery or two. I own five for my EOS 40D and 50D bodies as well as an extra charger. The night before I'm going out to shoot, I always recharge at least two spare batteries to take with me.

My friends at Adorama or B&H Photo carry these spare batteries in stock at all times!

Extra Batteries
Copyright 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 50D set on aperture priority (Av) using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 67mm, f/8 for 6 seconds at ISO 100 on Lexar Professional digital film. Post capture processing was done in Lightroom 2 using Nik Software's Viveza. Click on the image above for a larger version.

The lighting setup for this shot was fairly simple using a Lastolite Cubelite and one Canon 580EX II Speedlite. The 580EX II Speedlite was positioned to the right and and slightly in front of the subject with a single reflector directly left of the subject to add fill where needed. All exposure ratio magic was done wirelessly using Canon's E-TTL II sorcery.

Posted in Photography Tagged: Canon, Canon 50D, Product Photography