'Leica batteries'

[laowai_]

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1 hour ago, Paul2660 said:

The US cost of the Q2 and or SL2 battery is excessive, it's that simple.  The same basic battery that powers a S1R is 79.00.  

Hi Paul, 

Panasonic is the third largest battery manufacturer in the world. One of their factories is the $2B factory in NV (Gigafactory 1, joint venture with Tesla Motors).
 

The worst job at Leica must be product manager for batteries:

you have no leverage on your supply chain, your distribution channel demands a premium and the customers feel taken advantage of. 

Panasonic could probably give away the S1R batteries for free and not make any dent in the bottom line.

 

 

 

[beewee]

2 minutes ago, laowai_ said:

Hi Paul, 

Panasonic is the third largest battery manufacturer in the world. One of their factories is the $2B factory in NV (Gigafactory 1, joint venture with Tesla Motors).
 

The worst job at Leica must be product manager for batteries:

you have no leverage on your supply chain, your distribution channel demands a premium and the customers feel taken advantage of. 

Panasonic could probably give away the S1R batteries for free and not make any dent in the bottom line.

 

 

 

The Gigafactory is a joint venture with Tesla as you mentioned and the batteries are for cars and not for cameras. Also the supply chain for batteries is very long so it’s entirely possible that the substrates and other key materials are still coming from Japan and the Gigafactory is just focused on assembly and packaging.

[pgk]

4 hours ago, laowai_ said:

.....I would not put too much trust in the extra tests you mentioned.

Buying a new 'tested' battery in the UK provides a 1 year warranty. Buying the same direct from China, whilst cheaper does not, or at least it probably isn't worth the shipping to send back. I guess the UK supplier does check the battery to satisfy themselves that it will actually work effectively because of this.

[2M6TTLs]

15 hours ago, pgk said:

A lot of assumptions here. Firstly, Quality Control (QC) is a major cost of anything sophisticated which is why there are many cheaper products available today which are simply replaced rather than repaired if not working correctly, because its a lot cheapper to minimally QC stuff.

China has significant expertise in lithium battery manufacture but is subject to the same increased costs created by time consuming  QC. I tried to get a replacement battery for a Kodak dSLR some years back. None of the originals were available but I could order very cheap replacemts from China, or actually buy a guaranteed replacement from a specialst here in the UK. After a lot of discussion I realised that the UK sourced versions were identical to those from China but, in order to guarantee compliance with legalites and that the batteries were to specification, the UK supplier was testing them thoroughly and rejecting any which did not meet these requirements. Which bumped the price up by a large margin (about 5x). China probably manufactures batteries competitively but the QC costs of supplying to another EU companies specifications will still be significant I would think. Whether there are specialist makers in Germany who could supply and QC competitively I have no idea. All manufacturer's own batteries are quite expensive, Leica's are more so, like everything else they sell but nobody is forcing us to buy their products so we decide whether to do so and bear their prices.

Yes, we still buy the products don't we? and I certainly wasn't forced to buy my SL2s but I do have reasonable expectations of the product's performance. Some users here seem to be satisfied with their batteries but I don't feel I should 'bear 'the price  and here's why.. They are not like a filter or a lens cap ( optional accessories) but a vital source of power for everything the camera needs to do. If the battery was efficient I wouldn't complain at all. It's the cost / efficiency ratio that is so poor.

Look at how efficient Apple's batteries are in their iPads and laptops, ( also manufactured in China). Digital camera batteries have been around years now, yet these newest ones still force us to buy extras or switch off functions just to get sufficient battery life. If they want to make money from the batteries that's fine by me but they better be GOOD batteries, not ones that drain easily like these do. I think they should be able to build them better in 2021.

[laowai_]

9 hours ago, beewee said:

The Gigafactory is a joint venture with Tesla as you mentioned and the batteries are for cars and not for cameras. 

It is pretty clear to me that the Leica BO-ACL4 pack has two cylindrical cells inside, Tesla uses cylindrical cells in their battery packs (a lot of cells in each pack!).

Sizes are very different though and chemistry, electrode sheet material and obviously the taps are very different. 
Do the differences outweigh the similarities? Your judgement call.

Looking at the Leica BP-SCL4 next to a Panasonic DMW-BLF19PP, both batteries have exactly the same specs (7.2 V, 1860 mAh, 14 Wh) and it appears as if the same two cylindrical cells would fit into either of the two packs. But without cracking the packs open there is no way of telling what’s inside and I am not going to do this.

 

[sillbeers15]

10 hours ago, laowai_ said:

Panasonic could probably give away the S1R batteries for free and not make any dent in the bottom line.

 

 

 

Two different divisions with seperate P&L. Matsushita camera division cannot afford to give away batteries for free.

[pgk]

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FWIW I am still running batteries which I bought for my M8 in 2007. Performance is still pretty good. Which is more than I can say for a variety of batteries from other manufacturers. If SL batteries last as well then they aren't at all bad even at their price.

Edited October 6, 2021 by pgk

[2M6TTLs]

23 hours ago, pgk said:

FWIW I am still running batteries which I bought for my M8 in 2007. Performance is still pretty good. Which is more than I can say for a variety of batteries from other manufacturers. If SL batteries last as well then they aren't at all bad even at their price.

If. 

[sillbeers15]

I have been trading up my Leica M & SL bodies when new generations appear since M9 & SL. The M10R & SL2 bodies are currently with me and their additional batteries. I've not once had problems with batteries. The only digital body I kept on without trading off is my M8. I kept it as it is Leica's first digital M. It's batteries are still behaving well till today although I hardly use it.

[laowai_]

5 hours ago, sillbeers15 said:

 I kept it as it is Leica's first digital M. It's batteries are still behaving well till today although I hardly use it.

For lithium-ion batteries you maximize the lifetime of the battery if you:

Don’t run the battery down to empty.

Don’t charge toe battery to 100%

Store the battery at about 40% charge

 

The challenge is that the light on your battery charge is usually a bad indicator of the actual SoC of the battery. For example we had some reports on this forum that the Leica charger indicated full charge whereas a third party charger showed the battery was not fully charged.

Similarly, the battery is not at 0% when the camera indicates the battery is ‘empty’.

To do it ‘right’ you would need to measure the SoC of the battery with an external instrument and know the exact chemistry of the battery cells. None of this is generally accessible to average consumers.

 
When in doubt, I’d go with the manufacturers recommendation. In the age of the internet there are very few manufacturers—if any—who try to sell a handful of extra batteries by misleading customers.

Forgot to mention:

How about deep discharge like you had to do for NiCd cells that suffer from ‘memory effect’? There is no need to do this for lithium-ion batteries, actually it decreases the lifetime of the battery. 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2021 by laowai_

[LBJ2]

On 10/7/2021 at 10:33 AM, laowai_ said:

For lithium-ion batteries you maximize the lifetime of the battery if you:

Don’t run the battery down to empty.

Don’t charge toe battery to 100%

Store the battery at about 40% charge

 

The challenge is that the light on your battery charge is usually a bad indicator of the actual SoC of the battery. For example we had some reports on this forum that the Leica charger indicated full charge whereas a third party charger showed the battery was not fully charged.

Similarly, the battery is not at 0% when the camera indicates the battery is ‘empty’.

To do it ‘right’ you would need to measure the SoC of the battery with an external instrument and know the exact chemistry of the battery cells. None of this is generally accessible to average consumers.

 
When in doubt, I’d go with the manufacturers recommendation. In the age of the internet there are very few manufacturers—if any—who try to sell a handful of extra batteries by misleading customers.

Forgot to mention:

How about deep discharge like you had to do for NiCd cells that suffer from ‘memory effect’? There is no need to do this for lithium-ion batteries, actually it decreases the lifetime of the battery. 

 

 

The battery manual for this battery is an eye chart which is probably why nobody reads it. Magnifying glass was the only way I could get through it ! 

I found this recommendation in the manual:  "A new battery only reaches its full capacity after it has been fully charged and discharged two or three times by using the camera. This discharge procedure should be repeated roughly every 25 cycles"

[Paul2660]

Ideally Leica's  charger should have a discharge setup.  As trying to discharge the battery in the camera to the point that's fully discharged (5% to 0%) would be rather difficult IMO.  Have only seen discharge options on 3rd party chargers for other camera batteries.  

Paul 

Edited October 9, 2021 by Paul2660

[Photoworks]

14 hours ago, Paul2660 said:

discharged (5% to 0%

Modern batterie don’t like a 0% discharge. Most devises from the last few years on the market prevent from doing it in software so that you don’t kill the battery 

[Syu]

You can buy the same battery on Chinese e-commerce websites at a much cheaper price. Except for the logo. In fact, they are no different.

I also bought another very easy-to-use battery pack for charging the sf-60 -- not the old nisson power pack officially recommended. It has more power, and can charges the camera  at the same time. just 103$ or 89€