Here is a simple battery hack you can do to make you life as a photographer easier. As a gig worker, you likely deal with dead batteries by having more. And having more leads to a lot of shuffling, but if you are not methodical you may have during longer events put a battery in the wrong place (or only place) and grabbed it again when you needed a fresh one. Also if you work certain events you have likely learned that most inside event spaces are, in a word, dark.
If you look, most batteries have a way to tell if they are charged. In this case, the battery cover on the back has a small battery cutout. On many battery labels, they have a section that is a color and usually the rest is black with text. And the intent is you put the cover on in the orientation that will either show the color or not. You get to decide from here. In my case I chose color means charged and black mean dead. Works great, but in a dark room with little light you might need a little more.
Making It More Visible
In my case I have a P-touch label maker that likes to print labels with annoyingly long margins that I tend to trim and toss. Well, those little bits work perfect here. I can place them on the batteries so they clearly show up at even the darkest event spaces. Even if you don’t have this, you have options. I’d suggest looking to acquire a silver or the lesser known white sharpies. White-out may work, but you need to be careful not to put it on too thick or it may stop your battery from sliding into the camera cleanly.
Other Battery Covers
Other battery covers may also have a cut-out in a weird spot. Typically if the cover can be oriented in multiple ways, this may in one way expose a marking on the battery so you can use that to know. My old Canon Powershot batteries did this and it was really helpful. Another option you can consider is if the contacts on the battery is exposed or not exposed. My Wife’s camera only had this option.
Lets Talk About That Marking (Arrow)
I made mention that on some batteries there is a marking, typically this is an arrow that you can use to know which end would go into the camera first. And that seems pretty obvious when you think about it. But what I feel wasn’t well thought was that the marking was black on black. Reiterating the dark venue issue, I used the above mentioned white sharpie and colored it in. It’s a simple hack that really help you tell important information in a space where you just can’t see well.
I also labeled my battery holder so I can point the battery at the direction that denotes if I have used it or charged it. Very helpful and makes it clear to anyone, especially if I delegate the task to someone else to grab me a battery.
Let me know if any of this inspired you to better manage your batteries or just learned something.
