Panasonic LX3 battery
The Panasonic LX3 battery is
quite common to many Panasonic cameras and also at least to Ricoh R3 to
R5 and some Fuji cameras. In Australia for batteries I use this
site http://www.betterbatt.com.au/ drill down through Digital Cameras and Panasonic then look for LX3 in the very long Panasonic list.
This link http://www.betterbatt.com.au/s/digital-camera-battery/panasonic/lumix/dmc-lx3/ gives the page directly and then click on the Compatible models to see which other cameras use the same battery.
The companion charger is at http://www.betterbatt.com.au/s/battery-charger/panasonic/lumix/dmc-lx3/BBBC-51/ and
it will charge from its wall wart or from car 12V. For USB charger best
to search on eBay as they are cheap from China and do work well and
more convenient in this everything charges from USB era.
The
battery does seem to require a few full discharge recharge cycles to get to
full capacity, (maybe so, maybe not, conflicting advice on this) so in the beginning do keep using the camera well into
the battery warning signals. I managed to take another 1,300 shots even
with the battery indicator showing only 1/3 full, and then with the
flashing red indicator I still could take shots. Amazing number of
shots per charge, but that's an unrealistic situation, just shooting
without any turn off/on cycles. The manual states "380 shots per CIPA
standards" but
I suspect it will always be better than that, except if using menus a
lot, and reviewing shots a lot, and using the flash a lot. More
sensible is to budget on about 300 shots per charge and always carry a
spare.
This
type of battery does have a finite life and is usually quoted as 500
recharges or 3 to 5 years before it falls to half normal capacity. So
it does pay to have one spare, but not too many spares as they all age
with time even if not used. Buy a new battery only when the current one
seems a bit pathetic. I'm still using 4 year old batteries in other
cameras with no obvious problems so far.
The
latest sad trend at Panasonic is to update the firmware to stop the use
of third party batteries, so far (LX3 V2.2) that hasn't happened and it
can't happen as that battery is unchipped and has only the normal 3
contacts instead of the 4 needed to implement chipping. But
many other Panasonic models (and LX5) are now updated to have the
battery
restriction. Follow any of the latest firmware updates listed on this
page http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/download/ to see the battery update.
Price in Australia of genuine
LX3 battery about Oz$80 (if you can find one), third party from BetterBatt (Australia) company about Oz$14.
Sep 2018