Dionic 90 lifespan?
 

I have a two year old HD100 that was purchased with the Anton Bauer battery package. The camera has 265 fan hours and has pretty much been run exclusively with the battery. I always got about 6 hours out of the battery, but on my latest shoot, I noticed I'm only getting 3 hours.

I realize these batteries don't last forever, but I expected a more gradual drop. Am I to expect this battery is on its final leg and will soon be toast?

1-3 years is a normal lifespan for that battery depending on use. I have 5 Dionic 90's.

I could be wrong here but I think using one of the conditioning chargers instead of the Tandem charger/AC supply extends the life expectancy and MAY even help to recondition a battery pack that hasn't gone completely "over" yet.

the intellicharger will condition the battery as well as charge it but of course it's a lot more costly than the Titan Twin charger. One way to condition the battery though is to run it out of charge and recharge it 3 times. Then recharge to the top again and you will probably find it holds up again. If that doesn't work then the intellicharger would be the way to go unless the cells or a cell is shot but frankly with the age of the battery it should be OK

I only have the Titan charger and no access (that I'm aware of) to an Intellicharger. I'll try cycling it three times. I just wanted to know if I can expect further precipitous drops in capacity.

BTW, has anyone had a Dionic rebuilt? It's $195, but that's 1/2 the price of new.

sounds like 1 of the cells may be on the way out, hence the drop in operation time. If the discharge/recharge doesn't do it then a rebuild might be the only way out but I've never done it so I can't speak to that but I would suppose it would depend on who does it. If it's AB thenI'd say go for it, if it isn't then check out whoever is going to do it carefully. Don't want to mess it up.

Don, cycling a Li-Ion battery is not going to bring cells back to life. There are 2 things that could go wrong with a Dionic battery. First, if the cells went south, it is a chemical thing, there is no fix for that. Second, if the Fuel Gauge circuit in the battery got out of calibration, and indicates wrong state of charge, it is easy to fix by completely discharging the battery once and charging it back using any charger. This resets the Fuel Gauge, making it accurate for a number of cycles until it slowly starts loosing it's accuracy again. Intelligent charger does not have any special magic to it, it makes it more convenient to discharge/charge a battery than using a camera for discharging. In general, if a fuel gauge shows no charge left, try to keep running the camera as there is a chance it is just a fuel gauge error, while the battery still has some juice left.
HTH

Thanks for the info, Alex. It looks like my "fuel gauge" circuit is out of calibration. I just ran the battery dead and it took almost 6.5 hours, although the meter said it was drained at 3 hours. Hopefully when it's charged up, it will be back in sync.

The estimated life of a Dionic 90 according to AB is 18-30 months and/or 160 cycles, whichever comes first. I have a set of 7 that I use for Steadicam (fairly high drain) which are starting to show their age; 4.5 years and around 150 cycles. AB tells me I am lucky that they are still performing adequately. I'm getting ready to replace them with the new Dionic 90HC series that will allow for higher drain, like the Tiffen/IDX Powercubes, once they are released in a few months.

AB does not recell the Dionic 90's, by the way-. I plan to send my dead batt's to AB for recycling.

Glad it helped you! In general a rule of thumb is the Li-Ion cells age about 10%/year from the date of manufacturing used or not. In addition, while in use they last about 350-500 full cycles. (partial discharge to 1/2 charge constitutes 1/2 cycle)

Just a note of warning NEVER run the battery dead, set you camera for the lowest cut off then run it until the camera cuts off the grab a little paper clip and reset your meter and charge. If you run it all the way down ie putting a light on it and waiting for the light to die you will kill your cells.

Good thing I ran it down with my camera. I did consider connecting a light to the power tap. Glad I didn't.

Kinda off subject and basic question but can these dionics be left on a plugged-in titan charger when fully charged? or is it better to take them off ?

I'm pretty sure the instructions said to always leave it on the charger.

yes chris, that's what I remember too. Thanks for confirming. But someone told me LiIons should never be left on the charger or they lose battery life. can anybody else chime in?