Being an amateur photographer myself, I'm always in search of things which can help me in my photographic journey. Influenced by Strobist and after watching his seminar I decided to buy Sanyo Eneloop batteries for myself and try them out. I must honestly admit that I am delighted with having 3 sets already, if nothing else, because they really hold charge for a long time after being charged as factory claims they should. But the real question is: "If I'm already using batteries for my external camera flash, for which the speed of flash recharging is more important than long-term retention of charge in a battery, is it perhaps better to buy ones which have greater capacity rather than Eneloop 2100mAh?
I managed to get a set of Sanyo HR-3U 2700m batteries with original Sanyo charger, with which I recharged both battery sets, so I could time how much time is needed to charge a capacitor in Canon 380 EX flash after 10 full-power flashes.
The table/list below shows my results. Although not accurate as in laboratory, as my left hand on the flash test button and right hand on my stop watch aren't perfectly synced, I repeated the test 10 times in order to obtain an average value. Thanks to my Casio G-Shock, which can measure 1/1000 second, here is a fairly accurate result.
After 10 consecutive flash bursts with both battery sets average recycle time for regular Sanyo batteries was 4.0104 sec, and 3.3468 sec for Eneloop ones. The difference of more than half a second is not to be discarded lightly although I don't think it will drastically change the way you shoot your photographs as camera flashes can only stand a certain amount of full power flashes fired in a short amount of time.
Results are not alarming but are still quite interesting. I know it is only 10 test flashes, but conclusion however imposes that the Eneloop batteries regardless of the nominal capacity can certainly compete with batteries with larger nominal capacity. Although in this example these were not a real competitors, since these two products came from the same company. If I could have tested a variety of products, preferably with a larger sampling, maybe results would show something else.
Tested batteries are on average faster by 17% during the recycling time, while its nominal capacity is 23% less then that of the other model. Luckily the same price for both models, so there is no much to think about. I've been using 3 different Eneloop sets ever since in my external camera flash and they all have proven to be fast in recharging time.
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