Equipment Tip Sheets

Batteries do not like heat. Keep them cool. Batteries do not like to be dropped. Batteries can leak caustic substances. If you have a leaking battery or one that has corrosion (looks like white powder) on it, do not touch it with your hands. Use gloves. Wrap the leaking/corroded battery in a plastic bag. Dispose of the gloves as they may have an acid on them, which could seriously damage your eyes or burn your skin if you accidentally touch these places with your gloves.

Never run a lead acid battery all the way down to empty. When you see E- in the viewfinder, you should stop using this battery until it is recharged. We have very few lead-acid batteries.

After you charge a battery, check to be sure that it really charged. If you have a camera that displays the battery status in the viewfinder, use this to see if your battery is fully charged.

Nicad batteries, used primarily in field monitors and waveform monitors can develop "memory" if not completely emptied before recharging. You must run this battery down before recharging. Our chargers do this for you, but keep this in mind if you are using some other charger.

Some chargers have an indicator light on them that tell you when the battery is finished charging. If your charger does not have this feature, figure on charging a battery 4 to 8 hours when you first get it. A Cine-60, a CP-16, or a Sungun battery can take up to 18 hours to completely charge!

Please return batteries charged. If you do not have time to charge all of your batteries, let us know which ones have not been charged so we can try to charge them before the next user is scheduled to get them.

Keep uncharged batteries separate from charged batteries or mark them with a piece of tape. We try to charge batteries frequently, but we do not have enough chargers or enough time to guarantee that all batteries we give out are fully charged all of the time. If you encounter a battery that will not accept a charge, let us know. Put a piece of tape on it, write "BAD" on the tape, and keep it separate from your good batteries. If you need a working battery, bring the dead one back and exchange it.

Alkaline batteries are used in many items, particularly sound equipment. We have a box of partially used batteries in the checkout area that you can use to test the equipment. We do not supply brand new alkaline batteries for checkout equipment. This is an expendable item. Users are required to purchase their own expendables, such as film, videotape, gels, batteries, gaffer tape, etc. We usually have alkaline batteries for sale.

Helpful Hints

1. Know what kind of battery you are using so that you can treat it properly.

2. Know what kind of alkaline batteries you will need. Plan to purchase them in advance of your checkout so you aren’t running around the day of your shot trying to remember what size and how many batteries to buy.

3. Batteries are one item we don’t mind if you put tape on. Have masking tape available. Slap on a piece of masking tape each time you charge a battery. Write the date on the tape. If you have a bad battery write "BAD" on the masking tape and put it on the battery. This way you will not waste time putting a bad battery into a camera and then wondering why your camera doesn’t work. If you forget to tell us you have a bad battery or if you forget which one was the bad one, we’ll be able to quickly identify it.