akku's

[Cave Monkey]

From my understanding the temperature the battery is operating in only affects the rate of the reaction withing the battery and not the charge its holding.

Example: Take a fully charged battery, cool it down, try and use it, it wont work as the output is so low due to poor conditions for the reaction within the battery.
If you warm the battery up by any sensible means (ie not by naked flame, boiling, microwave ect...) then the reaction should return to a point where normal operation resumes.

If after this test the battery is still not working then charge is not being held, this could be to do with the charger or the battery itself. Only way to test this is to meter the charger and do an impedance test over charge on the battery.

 

[Dep]

Do you mean that fully charged batteries will retain this charge for longer (between charging and actual use) if you keep them cool?

 

[Cave Monkey]

Do you mean that fully charged batteries will retain this charge for longer (between charging and actual use) if you keep them cool?

From my understanding yes. However they will need to be within the recommended operating temperatures to function properly.

If you want to know the chemistry behind it a quick read can be found at  http://www.repairfaq.org/ELE/F_NiCd_Battery.html#NICDBATTERY_006.

I have experienced times up mountains when the temperature was substationally below 0c where it was only possible to take a few pics before the camera died, after placing the battery in a suitably warm area of the body (ill leave that up toy your imagination) the camera operated again for a few pics.... rinse and repeat.

Just found another link that might shed some light on the subject http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/coldbattery.htm

 

[anfieldman]

Pardon my ignorance but what is an akku?

sorry about that.
An akku ist, yes, a rechargeable battery.

With the other half purchasing a new camera yesterday I only found out that it is actually ACCU's as in accumulator. The spelling issue does cause a bit of confusion on this forum.