3rd party battery - K5

I have two genuine pentax batteries, one supplied with the K7 and the other supplied with the K5, both slightly different label, and surprise surprise both made in China. I also have a cheepo from Amazon, about £5 and one given to me by another member, both made in China. So far they have all worked equally well and if using Live View they all seem to lose power quickly. I also toyed with buying a pentax spare but think they are way over priced.

I have over the past year or so. Read the argument many times. I think it is now time for someone to prove that the Pentax battery. At more than seven or eight times the cost. Is indeed any better a performer than a cheaper third party one. Thus giving justification to its price. Rather than just stating that because the competition are cheap they must be inferior. I own both have have not witnessed any discernable differences between the two. I quite often take my camera out on a day shoot firing many shots. Or leave it a while before returning to it. In my opinion only the foolhardy or rich, would look to the Pentax brand when replacing.

Though I will add i rarely use live view, but quite often use the lcd screen to view results of images,

Somebody did post a link to some battery tests Stuart, but it's a while ago now so might take some searching out. The results were that only the Pentax battery actually met the specification, with the Inov8 coming close. That was regardless of what was stamped on the batteries. It seems the quoted capacities can be well out.

The other factor is that batteries can and do leak and, certainly in the case of laptop bateteries, even burst into flames. So the safest option is the Pentax battery, which if it did fail dramatically would at least give Pentax no excuses to not stump up for battery and camera.

The last factor for me is that over the years I have bought almost every other-maker accessory you could imagine and none were up to the production standards of the original marque. That's be it Pentax, Nikon, Canon or whatever. And I've used them all. If I had just bought marque accessories, saving up as needed, I would have actually saved a lot of money over the years. It was an expensive journey before deciding that, as a full time Pentax User, I would only buy marque accessories. Since then, costs have stabilised and nothing has been a disappointment.

However, just to balance things up, quite a few cameras pass through nmy hands on the way to eBay, and the only battery that has ever proved to be a dud was a Pentax one. That doesn't prove anything in particular, other than everything made can fail.

Batteries are a bit like printer inks in the sense that they carry a very nice margin for the 'authorized' sort and it is in the interests of the printer manufacturer to persuade us that we risk loss of quality (or worse) if we use cheaper substitutes. Sometimes substitutes are truly dreadful, but not always. Sadly, the analogy is not perfect: printer manufacturers do, after all, sell their machines at rock-bottom prices to get us hooked on their inks . And I confess that I'm so far too much of a coward to ditch Epson's inks, whereas I'm persuaded that some 3rd-party batteries are fine and will happily use them!

Battery test data summary here:

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/uzielgal/Batterycapacity2.jpg

Thanks Peter.

I had five batteries for my two K5 cameras (2 originals and 3 Chinese copies). I honestly couldn't tell you which I had in at any one time, they all worked well..

For the price difference I could buy 4 copy batteries to one original.

While we are on batteries again, does anyone know where I could obtain a cover that would protect the terminals on my spare DLI-90 battery.

My gripe against Energiser is that they don't supply one with the battery!

If you can get hold of an old K20D battery the case can
be cut to fit the K-5.

Even Pentax batteries don't come with a cover. I use a ziplock bag for one and keep the second spare in the charger.

You could try this. I've linked to it before, but never got round to ordering them.

My current solution is to use a Samsonite compact camera case left over from some previous camera we had.

Look in Poundland Pound World and other similar for a compact camera case. I got a nice one in camofluage colour, hold two batteries, haven't been able to find all day

Lacking a pound shop, or the Euro equivalent thereof, and out of curiosity, and because they are in the Netherlands, I have ordered a couple of holders from the company in my link.

They will be 3-d printed once they get my money so I look forward to receiving them. The postage is more than a tad steep for two things which will fit in an envelope mind.

For those of you using camera cases how do you know which is charged and which is empty?

Because all four of my batteries have a different label, yes including the Pentax supplied with the K7 & K5. Also the one with the piece of kitchen roll wrapped around it is the good one. the bare one is to be charged

Rotation. Three batteries. One in camera removed, goes in separate place altogether for recharging. One on left looking from top of case goes next. When battery from camera is recharged it goes into case on right so one on left is next in the circle. It's all positional, so only good if you have a system throughout the bag based on position.

Memory cards move in same direction but in different containers. The "pathway" through the Billingham bag is the same though.