12V battery charger

[dawesy]

Getting ready for a camping trip in and week and a half and suddenly realized that I don't have a 12v charger for my D300 battery! My Pentax took AA batteries so it was never and issue and I have one for my P&S.

This doesn't seem to be a readily available item, or am I just looking in the wrong places? Anyone know where I can pick up a fairly cheap one?

Obvious alternative is a cheapy inverter to run the normal charger, with the added benefit of being able to power a laptop or whatever, but I don't really need it.

Thanks for any pointers!!

[AndyL]

I thought that Nikon made 12v chargers but could not find anything. I would go for a sine wave inverter for the charger before using a 12v charger of unknown quality. The laptop I would run from a 12v converter in the lighter socket - a 300W inverter is insufficient for my laptop bricks which are only 65W out. I think Jaycar does step up converters. The converter comes in handy for a lot of other things...

[gstark]

Didn't the D70 come with an adaptor to use AAs in place of the EN-EL3?

If so, might that work in a D300?

[AndyL]

Not AAs. CR somethingorothers (EDIT: CR2) - never used it because batteries cost about $19 for two.

[Yi-P]

Didn't the D70 come with an adaptor to use AAs in place of the EN-EL3?

If so, might that work in a D300?

The D70 never came with that, its an adaptor for 3x CR2 batteries. The AA is only option for battery grip addons on either cameras...

[AndyL]

I seem to keep running into this when searching.

[dawesy]

Thanks for the suggestions all. I'd rather go a 12v charger than an inverter. I tend to want to avoid playing with laptops etc when I'm camping. Aside from the fridge and the camera, and a fluro or two at night, I'd rather not be tempted to take more gizmos!

I seem to keep running into this when searching.

Thanks for that, looks worth a try. That will teach me to search for a D300 charger rather than an EN-EL3 charger!

Cheers all, hope to have some nice shots from the snowies to share in a few weeks.

[seeto.centric]

the CR2 adaptor wont work anyway.. if EL3's and EL3a's wont work due to the missing 3rd contact on the battery (im guessing battery level monitor), then i dont see the CR2 adaptor being of much use.
Havent tried my El3a in the grip.. but i shall report back. im guessing it wont work.

-j

[radar]

You can get an inverter that plugs in the car cigarette lighter for about $70/$80. Works great to recharge the camera batteries. I used one on an extended trip not long ago. Make sure you don't drain your main battery. For that trip I ended also getting a Waeco 12 battery. I could then have it next to the tent and run the fluro light from it as well. It can also be used to run a fridge if you have the right one.

Cheers,

André

[ATJ]

Jon,
Why not get the MB-D10 battery grip for the D300 and use AAs in it? You can then recharge the AAs if required.

[MarkW]

If the D300 uses the same battery as the D200 (EN EL3e) then try contacting D D Photographics. I recently purchased a new D200 body for the wife and the collection of bits and pieces also came with what looked to be an after market battery charger as well as the genuine Nikon charger. The A/M charger runs a power pack transformer and also comes with a cig lighter power cord.

[dawesy]

Jon,
Why not get the MB-D10 battery grip for the D300 and use AAs in it? You can then recharge the AAs if required.

Mostly the price difference, looks like I can get a 12v charger for $35. Also I decided at this point the grip doesn't offer me a huge amount of benefit for the price. I don't really need the extra battery life very often, and while the better handling in portrait mode would be nice, I can live without it!

[seeto.centric]

The charger that Mark is referring to im guessing is similar/identical to the $35 charger you found.
We sell them at work for around $60+, and the battery plate for another $10-20.
The plates are interchangeable - ie. buy another plate to charge another battery. So you can use the same charger to charge all your digicam batteries, provided you have the plate for them.

As for the EL3/EL3a fitting into the EL3e magazine for the MBD10, it refuses to lock in due to a difference in notch widths (the notch to the side of the gold contacts on the EL3e is wider than that of the EL3/a)
Didnt want to sacrifice my sole EL3a to some minor modding and experimentation hehe

The CR2 adaptor i think would also suffer from similar problems as it is based on the same design as the EL3

-j

EDIT:
the $35 charger can be found on ebay for $28 incl shipping..
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Battery-Charger- ... dZViewItem
im sure there would be cheaper ones there..

[dawesy]

Thanks for that, i was searching for chargers for D300, hence didn't find all these things.

As usual a wealth of info here!