Ever wonder how much you’re paying to keep your rechargeable camera batteries juiced? The answer: probably around a buck or two a year. Researcher Baskar Vairmohan of EPRI conducted a study to determine the effect of popular gadgets on our nation’s power grid, calculating the annual electricity costs of various devices. He found that an iPhone uses $0.25, an iPad uses $1.36, a 60-watt light bulb uses $1.61, a laptop uses $8.31, a desktop uses $28.21, and a fridge uses $65.72. Camera batteries probably fall somewhere between an iPhone and a light bulb, meaning they’d cost less than a Starbucks coffee to power for a year — though you still need to pay for the (often pricey) batteries themselves.

(via EPRI via Boing Boing)

Image credit: Camera battery charger by sparkieblues

Have you ever wondered why newer Canon DSLR battery covers have a small rectangular hole punched into them? It’s more than just for style:

Take a look at the cover. Does it have a small cut-out a few millimetres in from one edge? This is not just decoration. It is designed so that you can tell at a glance which of your batteries are fully charged and which are not. The batteries that come with this cover have a blue stripe down one side of the back. When you remove a charged battery from the charger, you can attach the cover so that the blue is visible. When you remove a discharged battery from the camera, you can attach the cover so that the blue patch is not showing.

It’s a simple and useful tip that those of you who don’t read instruction manuals may have never learned.

(via Canon Professional Network)

Do you have an efficient way of keeping track of which batteries or memory cards are fresh and ready to use? Flickr user Damon Hair uses Post-it Flags to tag charged batteries and formatted memory cards, letting him quickly swap out used ones when shooting without having to check them one at a time. For an even cheaper solution, you can try wrapping a small rubber band around them instead.

(via Lifehacker)

Image credit: ready tags by damon.hair and used with permission