EOS Canon Camera batteries

Short guide to the range of batteries used in Canon EOS DSLR cameras

Canon cameras use a range of batteries for main camera functions and back-up. This info page contains camera battery types and associated information.

Hope it helps if you are looking for a replacement camera battery...

The four battery types

Canon uses four ranges of batteries for EOS Digital SLR cameras.

Older camera batteries use nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) technology, whereas new cameras use Li-ion (lithium-ion). Li-ion batteries tend to weigh about a third less than NiMH and are completely free from the memory effect. This is one way batteries gradually lose capacity after successive recharge cycles (but see Memory Effect below)

2008 News. There are new US regulations for carrying lithium batteries on planes

See here for detailed listings (see below for lithium values for LP-E4 and BP511A)

Battery types

Which camera uses which battery?

	Main Camera battery								Back-up battery
	NP-E3	NB-2L(H)	BP-511	LP-E4	LP-E5	LP-E6	LP-E8	LP-E10	CR2016	CR2025	CR1616
EOS-1D	√									√
EOS-1D Mark II	√									√
EOS-1D Mark IIN	√									√
EOS-1D Mark III				√						√
EOS-1Ds	√									√
EOS-1Ds Mark II	√									√
EOS-1Ds Mark III				√						√
EOS-5D Mark II						√					√
EOS-5D			√						√
EOS-10D			√							√
EOS-20D			√							√
EOS-20Da			√							√
EOS-30D			√						√
EOS-40D			√						√
EOS-50D			√						√
EOS-300D			√						√
EOS-350D		√							√
EOS-400D		√							√
EOS-450D					√				√
EOS-500D					√				√
EOS-550D						√			√
EOS-600D						√			√
EOS-1000D					√
EOS-1100D								√
EOS-D30			√							√
EOS-D60			√							√

Which charger charges which battery?

Refreshing batteries and the memory effect

Sometimes a problem with older NiCad batteries, and much more rarely so with NiMH types, this is not a problem with Li-ion types.

With NiMH cells they are often helped by a full discharge and subsequent recharge. With NP-E3 cells you can press the 'refresh' button on the NC-E2 charger

Current lithium-ion batteries are very different from the Ni-cad or Ni-MH batteries used in cameras from 5 or 10 years ago. Previously, it was often a good idea to drain a battery fully before recharging it, to insure good battery performance. This is not needed with higher-performing lithium-ion batteries. You should not need to – and should not – recondition batteries “just to be safe”. The reason for recalibrating the battery pack after 20 or so recharge cycles? It’s to calibrate the information display, so that the percentage of remaining battery power indicator remains accurate

The new LP-E4 and LP-E6 packs can also be refreshed, which although not to fix any memory effect, does help maximise battery performance.

If your charger doesn't have a refresh option then you can safely fully discharge a battery pack by turning off the auto shutdown feature of your camera and leaving it switched on until it shuts down.

Replacement batteries

There are a lot of cheap camera batteries available from places such as eBay. Be very careful if you buy cheap replacement batteries off the net. At best, many have much less capacity than advertised, and at worst they may represent a fire hazard. To see the sort of variation you can get in camera battery performance see the second link below.

More battery info

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/
FAQs and loads of other useful battery info
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/BATTS/BATTS.HTM
Test of many different makes of AA rechargeable batteries
http://www.steves-digicams.com/nimh_batteries.html
Charger and NiMh battery info from Steve's Digicams
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/BATTS/BATTS.HTM
Comparisons of different makes from a serious battery tester

The views in this article represent those of Keith Cooper. Keith is always happy to discuss matters raised in his articles. You can Email Us
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