It's well before daylight and I just got back from walking the dogs and it reminded me.. [View all]

I use a flashlight a lot, no streetlights here and I have two dogs that really like walks so I'm outside at night in pitch black at least twice a night and often three or more times in the winter when the nights are long, we have a lot of trees so even the full moon still leaves a lot of inky shadows.

My Maglite LED flashlight was a bit dim when I came back home this morning so I went to the charger to swap out the cells for fresh ones and it hit me that I've been using the same AA rechargeables for four years now and they still work about as well as they did new, I get about a week of dog walking bright light from two cells before changing them, which my charger tells me is when they drop to about 1.25 V, from the 1.51 or so they are when they come off the charger.

Four years ago I spent what is quite a bit of money for me on some top quality AA rechargeable batteries and the best charger for them, at the time I was using two big external electronic flashes with my camera and they chewed through AA alkaline cells at a remarkable rate and the cheap rechargeables and a cheap charger turned out to be money wasted so I did the research and found the best rechargeables and charger.

As much as I use a flashlight I would have spent more on buying disposables by now than I did on four good rechargeable cells and the charger to properly maintain them, that's not even addressing the environmental impact of the discarded cells or the fact I still use an external flash from time to time.

As I said in another thread, everything from now on is just lagniappe..

The cells? Sanyo Eneloops.

The charger? La Crosse Technology BC-700 Alpha.