What is the most critical thing you should check in your camera gear bag before you go into event photography?  Failure to do so may result unthinkable consequences.

Picture this; you are so excited when you reach Auto City for the grand event of the year - GT Roadshow with GT Girls lining up waiting to be photographed.  You approached one of the charming Sweet Young Things in a tight fit bikini with an umbrella standing next to a not-so-important GT race car, and she responses to you with a killer pose and a sexy smile.  You aim at her with your new and shiny Nikon D90 but you just noticed that your one and only battery is completely flat out.

 NiMH Battery is well known for bad self-discharge, in another word, it leaks very fast. It will lose 5-10% power on the first day, and 0.5-1% per day. In another word, the battery will dried up completely in about 3 to 6 months time even it is unused, which makes it a poor choice for ad-hoc devices such as camera, torch light, flash, remote controls, wireless devices, electronic gadgets or toys, etc. Ironically due to the high capacity, it is also ideal choice for heavy power consumption device such as digital camera, flash gun, RC toys, which are unlikely used on daily basis.

A new breed of NiMH Battery is introduced in recent years which claim to be Low Self-Discharge (LSD). It will remain 90% of the capacity after stored for 6 months, and remains 85% of the capacity after stored for 12 months. It is the ideal choice for high power consumption devices that you may not use it on a regular basis.

Two companies made good reputable LSD NiMH Battery are Imedion by PowerEx / Maha and Eneloop by Sanyo. Both of the respective company claims that their LSD NiMH battery capacity will remain 90% after stored for 6 months, and remains 85% of the capacity after stored for 12 months.

If you google the Internet and Forums, you will find mixed result, some people claims Eneloop performs better, and some claims otherwise. There isn’t many convincing information therefore I decided to do an experiment on both of these batteries Mythbusters style! Since both are advertised has the same LSD rate, no problem with that, and I am not interested to prove that either.  Why would you buy a battery to keep it 12 months on shelves anyway?  This is plain stupid way of advertising with some useless facts.  I am sure you are more interested to know the performance within short period of shelf life 1-3 months rather than 6-12 months.   

This experiment is to find out which one performs better and worth the investment.  This review does cost hard earn money, time, lots of hours to conduct the experiment, and write this review, I hope this will benefit you as the consumers especially if you are a photographer.

Objective: To find out the better performer battery

Items:
1. Four pieces of Sanyo Eneloop AA 2000mAh NiMH Battery
2. Four pieces of PowerEx Imedion AA 2100mAh NiMH Battery
3. Nikon Speedlight SB-800
4. Remote Flash Trigger
5. Process recording device (in this case, Sony DSC-P10 video mode)

Methodology:
1. Fully Charge the battery
2. Insert battery into Nikon Speedlight SB-800
3. Nikon Speedlight SB-800 set to M 1/4 -oEV
4. Fire the Speedlight as soon as it is ready (when the red light is on)
5. Repeat step #3 until the battery is completely depleted
6. Record the following:
a. X number of shots per minute after X number of shots
b. Total shots per charge
7. Repeat the process with next set of battery

To ensure both battery both are in identical optimal condition, both new set of Eneloop and Imedion is bought. RM60 for 4 pcs of Eneloop, and RM45 for Imedion. Both sets are fully charged for 8 hours as recommended by manufacturer for initial use with the same PowerEx MH-C204W Travel Charger before begin the experiment.

The test process is also recorded in video, each test is over 40-50 minutes long, if you are interested to see it for some reason, please conact me, it is too lengthy to fit in youtube.

Eneloop started with a recorded blazing fast 60 round per minute (rpm). It drops to 53rpm after the first 100 shots, and then it drops further to 52rpm after 200 shots. It stabilized at average of 45rpm from 300 shots to 1300 shots. It drops to 39rpm at 1400 shots and drops further to 37rpm after 1500 shots. Finally it drops sharply but still managed to squeeze a total recorded 1564 shots. Pretty impressive for first round.

The second test is followed by PowerEx Imedion. At the initial minute it has a noticeable lower refresh rate compared with Eneloop and I recorded a 51rpm for the first minute, lower than Eneloop 9rpm. It then dropped 20% performance to 42rpm after the first 100 shots. After 200 shots, it stabilized at average of 39rpm from 200 shots to 1200 shots (compared to 45rpm Eneloop). It drops slightly to 36rpm after 1300 shots to 1500 shots. Then it drops further down to 17rpm after 1600 shots. Finally it is completely depleted at 1660 shots.

Shots vs Time: The table below are the recorded time against 100 shots per mile stone.

Shots	Eneloop	Imedion
0	00:00:10	00:00:10
100	00:01:54	00:02:22
200	00:03:47	00:04:48
300	00:05:48	00:07:24
400	00:07:58	00:10:02
500	00:10:15	00:12:40
600	00:12:34	00:15:12
700	00:14:46	00:17:52
800	00:16:53	00:20:25
900	00:19:01	00:23:01
1000	00:21:15	00:25:38
1100	00:23:30	00:28:09
1200	00:25:51	00:30:49
1300	00:28:13	00:33:32
1400	00:30:39	00:36:22
1500	00:33:22	00:39:27
1600		00:43:16

Detail of the recorded experiment are put into table and graph as follows:

Conclusion:
Eneloop completed at 1564 shoots and Imedion completed at 1660, approximately 100 shots more than Eneloop, which is pretty much expected as it is a 2100mAh vs 2000mAh, with approximately 5% extra power. For a fair comparison, the first 1500 shots are only taken into account, which is already beyond what average number of photos a person can take on a whole day event (with speedlight)

On cycle performance point of view, Eneloop out performed Imedion from 4rpm to 14rpm with an amazing everage of 6rpm on a consistant performance.

In this experiment, it is concluded that the Sanyo Eneloop is a better performer than PowerEx Imedion, at least on a speedlight point of view.

p/s: In the process, the Nikon Speedlight SB-800 were damaged due to over heat, so please be careful if you want to conduct a similar stress test.

Related posts:

1. Where can you get Sanyo Eneloop and Maha Imedion? It is rather surprisingly difficult to locate retail shops in Malaysia that stock either Eneloop or Imedion. There is one online battery specialist shop called JJ Sales & Service Shop located in Penang that specially carrying these specialised battery to fulfil photographer's lust.......
2. Sanyo announces ‘new’ Eneloop batteries. Sanyo claims that the new Eneloop is able to be recharged approximately 50% more times than the previous version. In another word, previous version of Eneloop can recharge 1000 times and the new version can recharge 1500 times.......
3. Nikon new EN-MH2-B4 NiMH batteries. Move along, nothing to see here Nikon announced their own NiMH AA rechargeable batteries and chargers. Namely EN-MH2-B4, and MH-73 respectively. ......
4. Mythbusted The myth of Battle of the LSD NiMH Battery. Eneloop vs Imedion is busted. So did my faithful Nikon Speedlight SB-800 due to the stress test in my experiment.  The damage is found after the second round of test on Imedion.   As when does it happened, I am seriously have no idea, but I suspect it [...]......
5. Nikon D300 / D700 achieves 8fps without MB-D10 Battery Grip The Nikon D300 can do Continuous High Speed at 6fps, and with the MB-D10 Battery Grip, the Nikon D300 can achieve top speed of 8fps. Most D300/D700 user knows this. But do you know that D300/D700 can actually achieve 8fps with just some simple setting and WITHOUT using the MB-D10 too? Here is how, all you need is to do the settings and steps......

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