After a few years of juicing the same rechargeable batteries, I figured it was time for new AA’s to power my flashes.  The last rechargeables I put in my camera bag were used, coming with another camera a few years ago, and it seems as though they’d been showing their age a bit — longer charge times, and less productive use.

I’m pretty brand agnostic with things like batteries.  Duracell, Energizer… about the same to me.  Now, I know there are folks out there that swear by Maha cells, and I respect that, but there’s a certain amount of comfort in just being able to run to Home Depot to pick up rechargeable cells!

I picked up four new sets — one eight-pack, and two four-packs.  Not rhyme or reason there, just the luck of what was on the endcap display.  As it ends up two four-packs were just a few pennies higher than an eight-pack, but I’m not gonna sweat the few cents extra.

I kept each of the four-pack sets together, and divided the eight pack up into two groups of four.  Once I had the cells in hand, I labeled them with a medium Sharpie.  I used a single letter to identify each group of four.  This will allow me to quickly identify if a particular set of cells begins acting funny.

Remember I said it’d been a while since I’d last put new cells in the bag?  The problem I had was that I couldn’t pinpoint when I’d put those cells into rotation.  I decided to fix that this time around.  With a fine Sharpie, I labelled each cell with the month and year I bought the cells.  That oughta jog my memory down the road!