[Leica] more info on Leica M9 & third party batteries

[Robert Baron]

So I have this question, based on Kyle's research:  If I have 3 third party
M8/9 batteries purchased in about 2007 on eBay, and if I no longer have an
M8 or an M9 (or an appropriate battery charger) on which to test them, do I
have to wait until Friday to offer them for sale?

--Cautious Bob

On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 9:13 PM, kyle cassidy on the lug <
leicaslacker at gmail.com> wrote:

> so … recap of what i’ve figured out so far:
>
> 1) I have four third party batteries for my m9 and one “real” battery.
> 2) M9 thinks the third party batteries lose their charge almost instantly
> and go to “battery low” warning that blocks the screen
> 3) volt meter thinks the batteries are still charged
>
> so … update:
>
> I discovered while tooling around in the manual that when the “warning:
> battery low” screen comes on, pressing “set” tells the camera to ignore the
> warning and pressing the shutter release immediately after makes it go
> away, if not permanently, then for a very long time (like days) after that,
> while the battery will still show up on the “info” section as having a
> charge of about 4% it’s actually fully charged and you can continue using
> it. The downside is that you don’t necessarily know how uncharged it is
> without getting a volt meter out because for some reason the M9 either
> can’t or refuses to read the voltage of non-leica batteries consistently
> (sometimes it will display the charge accurately, but i haven’t found a
> pattern to it yet), although they power the camera fine (people here have
> said “nay” but I’m still thinking there might be some sort of propriatary
> chipping in the OEM batteries). So, upside, you can get four M8/M9
> batteries for $40 on eBay, and have enough juice for two weeks of heavy
> work without recharging as long as you don’t need to know the exact level
> of the charge.
>
> My experience is that one battery lasts about five days of regular
> (~75-200 photos/day) shooting.
>
> kc
>
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