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Potential Issue with Nikon MB-E5700 Battery Pack
PhotographyBLOG reader Craig Coussins has alerted me to a potential issue with the Nikon MB-E5700 Battery Pack, and it seems with Nikon’s customer support. Craig is a Coolpix 8700 owner and recently experienced the problem outlined below when he tried to use some new NiMH 2400 mAh batteries.
“I thought that you would like to know this. Whether or not the Nikon 8700 is better than other digital cameras, I have one and use the 8700 battery pack (MB-E5700) with this. I recently upgraded the batteries from 2000 to 2400 but they did not work. I bought a new and expensive charger thinking that my old charger was not doing the job. Despite this the batteries still did not work I returned all 18 batteries to the vendor and they exchanged them. The new ones still did not work. I then asked Nikon about this and they replied that their cameras don’t take larger than 2000 rechargeable and if I did get them to work they would seriously damage the camera. Funny how most dealers are selling these higher grade batteries but neglect to inform us that a major company like Nikon can’t actually use these new higher grade batteries. I spent a fortune for nothing. I mentioned this issue to Jessop’s recently and they were amazed and completely unaware of this fact.”
Reader comments (see below) indicate that it is almost certainly an issue with the electrical contact between the batteries and the contacts in the battery pack. Have any other Nikon owners experienced something similar? Leave a comment and let me know.
Samsung ST93 Review
Nikon Coolpix S4150 Review
Kodak Easyshare M5370 Review
Olympus SP-810UZ Review
Ricoh CX6 Review
Canon PowerShot S100
Fujifilm FinePix X10
Canon PowerShot SX40 HS
Nikon Coolpix AW100
Sony NEX-7
#1 phule
I'm sorry but this is a load of BS. There is no 2400/2000 limit with Nikon or ANY OTHER CAMERA. The tech person you talked to was blowing smoke up your rear. 2400 is a measure of the total "storage" the battery has. It has NOTHING to do with the amount of volts coming out. The voltage is ALWAYS the same, right up until the very end when the batteries are exhausted.
That is the whole point of NiMHs. They are CONSISTANT from beginning until very end.
Anyway, by posting this on PhotographyBlog you are doing many people a disservice. The level 1 tech support person from Nikon gave you an answer so he or she could get back to playing Solitare. Utter and complete bull.
3:36 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#2 Mark Goldstein
OK phule, I take your point!
It's a little worrying to know that Nikon's support staff are so ill-informed...
3:41 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#3 faramir.fr
I agree with Phule. The units you have to keep in mind are:
- A for Amperes, current unit.
- V for Volts, voltage unit.
- Ah (or here mAh) for Aperes per hour, capacity unit.
Both the current and voltage you'll get from your batteries will be almost the same. The only that will change between 2000 and 2400 mAh are the recharging time and the autonomy.
In my business I rarely recieve decent answer before I reach the level 3 support... :(
faramir.fr
3:46 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#4 phule
Sorry, I take back the disservice bit. It's good to have this out there, because it shows how poor tech support has gotten these days.
Anyway, don't mind my ranting, I'm only on my second cup of coffee.
3:59 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#5 Mark Goldstein
I guess the real question is - why didn't those batteries work in Craig's Coolpix 8700 (all 18 of them)?
4:04 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#6 phule
Well, were they all the same brand? If so, I'd be willing to bet they are cheap and/or flawed.
The MB-E5700 battery pack is not something I've used, so I don't know the details of all the possible flaws, but I suspect there is more going on than meets the eye. For example, reviews on amazon.com about this unit claim that they get very poor life with NiMHs using it. Why that would be I have no idea, but it sounds like a design flaw.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B00006FXOW/
4:19 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#7 Anton
I'm going to guess that the batteries were just a little shorter than others. I've had this problem with my older Nikon Coolpix 800.
I've also seen problems where the plastic "skin" on the battery wrapped part way around the negative terminal and prevented contact.
I'm currently have a couple sets of 2000mAh and one set of 2250 mAh batteries, all work fine.
4:22 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#8 phule
B.t.w there seems to be a ton of info in the dpreview.com forums on the MB-E5700. Lots of people are using this unit with high capacity NiMHs.
4:26 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#9 phule
Anton is probably on to something. Here's a thread about something similar on dpreview.com including the fix.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=8145744
4:30 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#10 Bob Morrison
Hi Craig, I have had the same problems as you. If you don't mind a bit of work on your battery holder try this. Using a small pointed object pry/bend each + contact in the battery holder in the direction of the batteries, just a small amount,(maybe a 1/32"). The problem I had was not enough pressure between the contact and the batteries for a good electrical connection. Mine has worked fine using 2500mah iPowerUs batteries since.
4:57 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#11 Bob Morrison
Hi again Craig,
I just read the comments from other readers and was reminded of another problem I encountered, plastic wrap peeling off of batteries.
I found that each battery scraped on the plastic on the upper edge of the holder opening when it was slid both in and out. Using a small phillips head screwdriver I removed the two screws holding the metal tab that secures the battery holder when it is inserted. This allows plenty of room to use a small file to remove the small amount of plastic that protrudes below the metal tab that you removed. This is what my batteries were scraping on and it solved that problem.
5:30 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#12 Mad@TT
Mark perhaps you should update the blog entry to reflect some of the points raised in comments above so people reading it don't get confused unnecesarrily?
6:11 pm - Tuesday, December 14, 2004
#13 Mark Goldstein
Good point Mad@TT, I'll make a few changes now...
7:49 am - Wednesday, December 15, 2004