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Panasonic Begins To Lock Out 3d-Party Camera Batteries
OhMyBattery writes "The latest firmware updated for Panasonic digital cameras contains one single improvement: it locks out the ability to use 'non-genuine Panasonic' batteries. It does so for safety reasons, it says. It seems to indicate that this is going to be the norm for all new Panasonic digital cameras. From the release: 'Panasonic Digital Still Cameras now include a technology that can identify a genuine Panasonic battery. For the protection of our customers Panasonic developed this technology after it was discovered that some aftermarket 3rd party batteries do not meet the rigid safety standards Panasonic uses.' The firmware warning is quite clear as to what it does: 'After this firmware update your Panasonic Digital Camera cannot be operated by 3rd party batteries (non genuine Panasonic batteries).'"
Everyone wants to make a buck stifling competition and innovation these days.
There goes Panasonic off my list for an upcoming camera buy.
Ahh... Nothing quite like the smell of a good ol' arms race in the morning...
I guess it will not be a Panasonic. If it had issued a warning after putting hte battery in, then it would be OK. This just sounds like the same crap Lexmark pulled. I still actively recommend against their printers.
"Hey, install this so you have to buy more expensive batteries! Otherwise were completely powerless to stop you!" At least they were honest and gave warning.
I bet Sony is next. They love proprietary hardware and formats. Asspirates, all of them.
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
with this as long as their batteries are reasonably priced.
If they go Lexmark, however....
Every major manufacturer of printer cartridges has counter-measures to prevent remanufactured inkjet and laser cartridges. These are designed to prevent "3rd party" cartridges.
Epson is probably the nastiest, An encrypted chip and a fuse that gets blown after a certain period is on their newer models.
Regardless, if there is money to be made, someone (especially in China. They seem to be very good on circumventing consumable copy protection), will make an acceptable aftermarket part which appears to be authentic.
I never understood the obsession with 3D Parties or their camera batteries.
2D for life, bitches.
What's a 3D-Party and where can I sign up?
If Panasonic was concerned about 3rd party suppliers selling unsafe batteries, it could sell licenses with strict requirements or set up a certification program to test the safety of the batteries sold by these suppliers.
Locking out competition to create an artificial tie-in between the camera and the battery is anti-competitive, in my opinion. There are ways to ensure the safety of customers without a tie-in that undermines market-based competition.
Mind you, I only read the blurb- I don't know the details of what Panasonic is proposing. But the summary seems telling.
Is the "Panasonic camera battery" market considered a market, in terms of antitrust law? If so, are they setting themselves up for antitrust action?
And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the huge mark up on "official" camera batteries at brick and mortar stores.... what's next? certified panasonic memmory cards? Just to make sure, you know.... those brick and mortar stores don't go out of business.
"some aftermarket 3rd party batteries do not meet the rigid safety standards Panasonic uses."
It would be interesting to see what standards they refer to. Is that a trade secret?
But probably in the legal opinion of more than one lawyer, at least in certain jurisdictions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A better solution would of been "This firmware update identifies the use of 3rd party batteries and alerts the user to the risk of using them. It monitors the voltage output and shuts down the camera if it determines that the battery is insufficient or possibly dangerous. And invalidates the warranty too". This would of left open the choice to the user - after all there are a great many very good 3rd party batteries and they have saved my bacon in the past.
By monitoring the voltage I mean the camera can detect an abnormally fast voltage drop against its usage that might mean a defective or damaged battery - naturally it cannot detect if the battery is about to get white hot and set fire to the camera, but hey the user was warned and the warranty invalidated. I would expect the manufacturer to check the damaged camera EEPROM and say "aha! according to our data log you used not panasonic batteries, thats no repair for you!".
By removing the element of choice they raise the natural suspicion that this decision was taken on commercial grounds, not safety and risk a consumer backlash and dissatisfaction.
What's a 3D-Party
It has numerous meanings.
I doubt it, based on the fact that when I used to work for a major printer company we could not do anything to prevent ink refillers or 3rd party ink cartridge makers from competing for the trade business. If we did they could sue us. I expect that panasonic may be in for a lawsuit from a battery maker.
The justification they offer for this is not necessarily illegitimate.
If the camera has a built-in charger, then there is a very real possibility of battery fires or explosions if a 3rd-party battery doesn't match the characteristics that the charger was designed for. If you don't believe that can happen, then I suggest you review all the stories of exploding laptop batteries. It can and does happen.
On the other hand, if there is no built-in charger (my Canon cameras don't have built-in chargers), then they are definitely first-rate ass-pirates and players of the pink oboe.
...and your cellphone, and on all devices with batteries and embedded processors.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Now I can cross Panasonic off my TV short-list - thanks for making life a little easier Panasonic!
Haven't Panasonic learned anything from Sony's collection of examples of what not to do if you want to keep your position as a market leader?
I just bought a tz7, and this will be the last panasonic I buy, the same as that I shall never again buy a HP (for numerous reasons). Giving me a choice/warning is alright, simply telling me to not use a 9,- 1200mAh non-their-market-batery against a 45,- 895mAh their-market battery totally pisses me off! (and then some). This is a bad twist.
Free yourself use open source.
Panasonic makes cameras?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I expect nothing less from them, actually. They have certified Panasonic electronics repair locations, after all. There's only one repair shop in my area that is certified. However, I do tend to like their products, and I've had very few issues or complaints with the ones I have. I would gladly pay the premium for their certified products/services, and have in the past, and have been very satisfied.
Could it be possible that they are doing this as a reaction to the laptop battery recalls? Perhaps they don't want to have to suffer the repercussions of a battery catching on fire or exploding in someone's hands or even face. If they limit the batteries that can be used to Panasonic certified ones, then this becomes less of an issue for them. If someone uses a non-certified battery, and it explodes in their face, Panasonic can try to dodge the litigation.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Why not just build the battery right into the camera. End of story.
Battery problems? Take your camera to an authorized Panasonic repair shop...
Norelco did this for years with their electric shavers. I'm not sure if they still do.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It'll be even better on cellphones: in an offline environment, any authentication feature will ultimately boil down to embedding a password of some kind(either an actual password, or something moderately more complex, like the serial number signed with the manufacturer's private key) which will always be vulnerable to extraction and cloning(there'll be no way for device A to tell that the serial number of its battery is shared by 100,000 other batteries from the same clone shop).
In an online environment, and any cellphone would qualify, checking serial numbers against a central database becomes trivial, as does uploading occasional battery health reports, to prevent the serial numbers of dead batteries being extracted and reused("Ah, authenticating battery #194394872349873, at full health and with 0 charge cycles. Nice try, #194394872349873 was reported deactivated by handset 35-209900-176148-1 three months ago, with 546 charge cycles...")
they went at Mircrosoft for including internet explorer by default with no good way to delete it. Seriously?
This will cause the Don't Buy Panasonic movement to be even stronger.
My completely uninformed guess about how this happened. Panasonic executives: "How can we sink the company?" Their answer: "Get a story about us doing something abusive on Slashdot. Slashdot readers understand technology and will make sure everyone knows."
In 5...4...3...2...
Well, you get the idea. Any wagers as to how long it'll take for this to hit the legal system? I'm sure the resultant flare-up will be most entertaining. Time to invest in popcorn futures.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I'll make the decision on whether I trust the battery manufacturer when I buy my battery thank very much. Can't even trust Sony now can we?
The "official" reason why you are not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon
is that oregon pavement is wet and hazardous, and only trained grunt's can navigate
the treacherous pavement.
This will guarantee the safety... of their profits!
If I can't use AA or AAA batteries (or some reasonable equivalent) I'm not interested. Even my pro D-SLR has an adapter to use double As.
Just say no to crap like this. Who needs Panasonic? There are lots of choices out there.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What a coincidence! Today my wallet decided to lock out Panasonic products. Oh well. Canon is better anyway.
It works for Apple.
Too late, iPods and other such devices generally don't allow you to remove the battery at all.
Where do we go from here?
I was planning on purchasing some Panasonic Lumix cameras for our school. I've been very excited about the purchase, particularly because that they use a unique battery, rather than AAs. Reason being, I've had about 20 AA rechargeables disappear in the last two years. That's about $50 worth of batteries.
So, get a battery that's exclusive for the Panasonic camera, and no more people jackin' batteries. Of course, all of this was contingent on buying the $8 off-brand batteries, not Panasonic's $50 take-it-up-the-ass brand.
Li-ion @ 20 degrees C will lose about 20% of its capacity per year without usage. that means in a few short years it will be time for you to buy a new camera whether you want one or not. I bet there are lots of perfectly good cameras thrown away because their proprietary lithium ion batteries lost their capacity and got discontinued.
Of course, one can always rebuild the original Panasonic battery pack. just buy a similar voltage and slightly smaller size lithium ion (3.6 or 7.2v usually) on ebay and you should be able to retrofit it inside the original battery pack.
Before posting, I read through the comments here to see if ANYONE had a clue regarding the dangers of Lithium Ion (and especially Lithium Polymer) batteries.
Nope. Not a one. Zero, zip, nada. Everyone wants to bash Panasonic rather than do a little research first.
Talk about knee-jerk responses.
Listen, Lithium Ion technology is DANGEROUS. It catches fire easily -- very easily -- and destroys everything around it.
Credit Sony, who is one of the pioneers (if not THE pioneer) of Lithium battery safety, for protecting their customers.
Sheesh, you people are as bad as any other herd of sheeple. Not everything that a corporation does is evil.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I'm guessing that Panasonic, like most hardware manufacturers, make little to no money on the camera but make a handsome profit on the batteries and other accessories. Panasonic is doing what every other cash-strapped company is doing: creating a fixed revenue stream. But in this case, they are doing nothing except hurting themselves. They just talked me out of buying their product.
We don't live in Shouldland.
Maybe they're not doing this to make a buck. If they were doing it to make a buck it strikes me that they wouldn't be so up-front and honest about what the latest firmware update will do to your camera. Perhaps they are just genuinely that uppity and believe that if 3rd party batteries can't meet their quality and safety regulations, then they have to protect their devices from that. It's still not a good reason, but certainly better than screwing over the general population for the sake of making an extra buck.
Exactly the same line HP gives for printer cartridges. But they can't tell if you refilled the cartridge and they rely on digital obfuscation to prevent people from making knockoff cartridges.
Hopefully the knockoff makers will figure out how to make their batteries report that they are actually "genuine".
I use third party Li-ion camera batteries in my electronics projects to provide portable, rechargeable power solutions, and most of the cheap knock-offs will have the same pins; Positive, Negative and Thermistor. However, the Thermistor pin will just be hooking into an internal 10K resistor that doesn't change with temperature. The battery will still fit in the camera, but the temp sense pin is merely a dummy pin. From that perspective, I can see a safety concern... In this case though, I think Panasonic is just trying to tie their camera to their preferred battery suppliers.
Could it possibly lead to cheaper batteries?
Let's assume that there are an assload of bad aftermarket batteries out there (I'm not convinced there are, I have an aftermarket I bought to use with my Panasonic(!) Lumix camera and it works fine; btw, I love the camera, and David Pogue seems to like Panasonic cameras, too. Anyway...).
If Panasonic ends up with a lot of warranty work, customer service, etc related to these bad batteries, they may actually end up having to charge more for their cameras and/or accessories to cover the cost of the technical support related to bad third party batteries. If they restrict them to Panasonic only batteries, perhaps they will eliminate an expensive support issue that might actually allow them to sell batteries for less, or at least not raise prices as fast.
I'm sure this train of thought has more holes than a collandar, but what we don't know (but assume anyway) is that Panasonic is lying and they only want to do this to clean up selling extra batteries. I'd like to believe in the bogeyman, too, but maybe there is some justification that will streamline their products use/support that actually makes it cheaper/easier to support.
(I'm sure that lame memory cards are much bigger issue, and I'd guess that generally speaking the lithium cells in third party batteries are probably from the same limited number of manufacturers as the Panasonics. But hey, I'm trying to be optimistic...)
Just because I feel like, I am going to mention something about replaceable batteries. First, the main reason to have user replacable batteries is that they are extremely unreliable. There is no 100% real way to predict if a battery is going to work. I recall the procedure to certify a battery for space, just in hopes that it would not crap out, was quite extensive. This means that a manufacturer is taking a chance with a battery that require technician input. There are going to be a certain number that will have to replaced under warranty, unless they are very careful in certification.
Not having a user replaceable, to me, is mostly a matter of charge cycle. I do have an extra battery for my DSLR for those occasions when I might wear out the battery without time to recharge. It does happen. OTOH, I only bought a battery for my old phone when it would not charge. Am I going to risk such hardware to save a bit of money on the battery, effecting a few percent of the price of the gear? No, of course not. For the panasonic cameras the price differential might be a bit more, and user may not be so dedicated to the quality equipment. Of course we do know that third party batteries do explode, and it is not always clear who is responsible for the backlash.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This is how Sony locked users into using only sony batteries on the PSP.
It's also how they opened the door to hacking the PSP.
Look up pandoras battery for info on how it was hacked.
I'm wondering if this will start homebrew firmwares with this check removed for these cameras . . .
Years back when the digitals were first hitting the market they were even more power-hungry than now. They could suck a set of batteries dry with just a half hour's use. Crafty owners thought they could get around this expense by using rechargeable batteries. Responsible manufacturers will anticipate problems and stick warnings on the box, on neon sheets inside the packaging, etc, when a potential fuckup could happen. The way these cameras were designed, rechargeable batteries would destroy them. I don't know how or why. All of the 1-star reviews on Amazon mentioned the recharge problem and how people had ruined cameras that Kodak would not RMA because they didn't read the manual. The only warning was on page 215 in one unbolded and otherwise unremarkable sentence.
I never bought another one of their products again. This was utter asshattery. Users would expect to be able to use rechargeable batteries, especially since other cameras on the market did not have this limitation. Certainly a warning on the box would have been helpful, or maybe one of those big neon cards that you simply cannot miss. Maybe a warning sticker taped over the battery compartment. But it's obvious that Kodak knew this would be a deal-breaker for people so they deliberately concealed this design defect.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
This is likely to go down a similar path to the Lexmark vs. Static Control Components case - the court said that copywrite protections don't apply when they are required for plug compatibility.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Static_Control_Components for more details.
If these batteries are lithium polymer, I can't blame Panasonic for locking down their cameras. Have you seen what happens to LiPoly batteries if they are improperly charged? Do you remember the laptop batteries that caught on fire a few years ago? I hope you have a fire extinguisher nearby.
No one bitched about that. T20 (which was already four years old when this FW was put out) even had this done.
, but if that was your true reason then you would be able to allow and disallow battery manufacturers that provide safe batteries. Don't lie to us. We are not stupid.
when I was looking for an MP3 player.
I have bought a number of music players, cameras and other electronic gadgets and my number 1 requirement is it must use standard off the shelf batteries (namely AA or AAA). This is for a number of reasons:
1) Avoid planned obsolescence - hardwired batteries (I'm looking at you Apple) mean the product will be useless by not holding a charge long before I'm done using it.
2) Emergency power - having proprietary batteries either hardwired or not means that if I run out of a charge while on a road trip or away from my charger, then I'm hooped - I have to wait up to hours for the battery to charge.
And now:
3) Stupid vendor lock in - I have better things to spend my money on than overpriced name brand accessories / supplies.
I look forward to the day when cellphones can efficiently run on 2 or 3 AAA's.
I just bought a lower end digital camera and steered away from Panasonic as soon as I realized they did not use AA or AAA batteries. Went with a Fuji S1000 - have been happy with it so far - uses the same NiMH AA batteries I have for my Olympus camera, iRiver MP3 player, and LogicTech cordless mouse.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
The previous firmware versions (before the battery "update") that contained other necessary fixes, are no longer available on the Panasonic site.
I never thought to ask when buying a camera if it "allows" third party batteries. It is (was) the norm that if you can swap batteries, you'll be able to find third party versions of them.
... with releasing their KX-6500 printer. First they released the printer along with cheap accesories (toner and drum module - sold separately). Two years later drum module price almost tripled and at this point its price became comparable with new printer price. Early users of this printer were basically screwed as drum had to be replaced after approx. two years of moderate use. Since then I don't touch Panasonic products, even with a ten foot pole.
No, canon has a much bigger marketing department (which is why you see 4000 canon products in every store but almost no Pana products)
In the digital compact market Panasonic is holding its own fairly well. Although the newest models indeed have these nonsensical battery firmware updates, the FZ28 can go head to head easily with the canon SX10.. And if you don't upgrade firmware, the LX3 with the 1.1 FW is one of the best cameras in its segment. Similarly for the tz7.
Yes, canon has the brand hame, but if you have a look at DPReview, you can compare reviews to see how the cameras/brands compare.
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
If you know what a soldering iron is the battery in an ipod is plenty user replaceable.
When was the last time you saw a 'pod with a user replaceable battery.
When I left for work this morning. My 1st gen iPod has an aftermarket battery in it. No, it wasn't Apple's intention to let me change it, but when it died a year after purchasing the device, I wasn't going to spend that kind of money getting it replaced because of Apple's poor design decision, so I cracked the case open and did it myself. That was about 7-8 years ago, and that aftermarket battery is still going strong, unlike the original Apple part.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yeah but my wallet has locked out Canon too since their printers are ink-chipped.
The only good thing about all this is that I've got a fatter wallet !
You puting too much on the clueless BB sales people do you rely think that they will know 100% about this?
Maybe they cannot do a "stealth" update because they'd be sued by current camera owners who'd see their 3rd party spare battery sets reduced to expensive paperweights.
No, the only way they'd introduce this is new firmware is with ample warning.
I sure hope this only applies to their consumer-level stuff. Anton-Bauer battery mount systems are pretty commonplace on their professional camcorders.
"What a coincidence! Today my wallet decided to lock out Panasonic products. Oh well. Canon is better anyway."
People ask those with experience what to buy and why. Some well-placed scorn such as "good luck buying batteries for that piece of shit" can put off potential customers.
If corps can stick it to us, we can stick it to them with equal or greater gusto. :)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I was praying that someone would do something about all these deaths and burns from exploding batteries - the new media is littered with stories about this horrific carnage!
Obviously they got this idea from HP and the like locking out 3rd party printer ink.
So who is going to be next to do this? APC? I can just see UPS manufactures requiring their specific battery. No more putting a 9 AMP hours battery in a UPS made for 7A.
Then auto manufactures? GMC requiring only GMC replacement batteries, windshield wiper blades, oil filters, and such.
I hope not.
Sony did this with a camcorder I purchased in 2001.
If they stopped doing it, I don't know because they are on my blacklist for a growing number of reasons.
WTF.. its a frakin' battery for gods sake.
a battery is designed to do one thing: supply a direct current voltage to a device.
STUPID!
PPN
Well, not necessarily. After owning two Canon digicams, I recently purchased a Panasonic LX3. There is nothing quite like it (other than Leica's rebadging of the same camera), the camera has caused quite a stir among compact enthusiasts and the black version has been in short supply.
So, I overcame my bias against Panasonic, and so far the camera is very good. But now this battery thing, which sucks!
When I worked for a big box electronics retailer back in the mid 90s you better believe us clueless sales people had to know stuff like that. They would even send people from head office to "shop" us and make sure we knew our marketing plan and the "company tract," and if we didn't know it well enough we got our numbers pulled and spent the next two weeks shadowing another sales person and working for base instead of making money off of selling stuff.
If you get a "clueless BB sales person" who doesn't know the answer to questions like this, tell them thank you and leave the store. There is also this great thing called the Internet, where you can research all this stuff before plunking down your hard-earned cash. This is a great place to start.
I don't care why you're posting AC
In my very unscientific investigation 2 years ago, I noted that every camera I saw that used AA batteries took repeated flash photos at a much slower rate than Li batteries did. Since the photos I most take are of small moving children, this was key.
POTENTIALLY I think I have a DIFFERENCE with you on that. I think they're going to meet some ... nah, fuck it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Give the camera away for free and make all the money over battery sales?
Canon makes nice products. And you can run chdk hacker software on them.
Why can't I turn it off?
I can decide to turn off my airbag. I can decide to turn off my antivirus suit (or I can decide not to use one altogether). I can decide to keep my alarm off when I leave the house. Why can't I decide to use inferior, crappy batteries, knowing well that I put my camera, the picture quality and maybe the life of my dog at risk?
Another thing that crossed my mind: Is a firmware update that cripples part of the system grounds for a return, even after use for a prolonged period of time? Unless the update is reversible, the camera might cease to work for me. I probably bought the camera under the impression that the feature that was removed was part of the deal, it might have been a critical deciding factor in my choice. If it is, we'll see a lot of happy customers who can toss a dated piece of electronics, get the full price returned and buy a new cam with more features. If it is not, we'll see a lot of companies that sell something, only to cripple it later when you can't back out from the sale. False advertising at a whole new level.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
See, that's why I like thrift stores. Today on a lark I went to the local Goodwill and picked up a rockin' no-name point & shoot 35mm for like, $2. Film, battery and developing will probably run about $10 total and I get to hold nice, weirdly uber-colored, glossy photos in my hand as opposed to looking at them (as most people do) from the back of a digital camera on a tiny screen. Analog rocks and Panasonic can kiss my gritty iso 100 butt.
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
My digital Olympus uses rechargeable AA cells - which was one of my requirements when selecting a camera: No Funny Batteries. NiMH 2500mAh cells run about $10 per 4, and my responsible 2-hour charger handles them all. And in a pinch I can use disposable cells with it. Why anyone would would want anything else is foolish, despite how thin it might make the camera.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, the battery for the Canon 5D MkII also contains a chip. If you buy an aftermarket battery for it the battery status won't show on the 5D MkII because the chip as not been cloned yet. So if you buy a battery for the 5D MkII by another brand you'll have to use a special charger and can't use the one from Canon. Most of my friends are now buying the original Canon batteries for their 5D MkII now.
Other than that, the Panasonic LX3 is great compact, which is not included in this firmware "upgrade".
X Panasonic off the list of possible cameras. They're just trying to force consumers to fill their greedy pockets. Some camera makers have done this with memory cards too. I won't buy.
Seriously, why don't you trust us?
While I think this is a stinky move of Panasonic, they may be serious about the safety thing. I can easily imagine their legal dept. insisting on it to avoid lawsuits.
The government can't save you.
Apparently the LX3 uses a common, older battery style so it's still "open". All their newer camera lots though have the feature now, including G1.
Or is there no market for panasonic camera batteries?
Then let them put a micro black box http://www.maxim-ic.com/products/ibutton/ to show it was running a non-authorized battery when it exploded.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Panasonic has determined that electricity from non-Panasonic power plants is detrimental to the environment. You are only allowed to charge your genuine Panasonic battery from a genuine Panasonic power plant. Panasonic Power Plantsâ use only the finest ingredients which makes the power much cleaner and purer. It also makes the power cost 150% more. but that's the price of pure.
If you plug the charger into a non-Panasonic outlet, the camera will give you an error message, erase all your pictures, and send your information to the local "child molester" database.
they would provide an advanced menu option to allow 3rd party batteries that the user deems safe.
i wish i could stop
"Fucking Lexmark."
you had me at #!
I don't think you will ever see cell phones run on AAA batteries simple due to the size. Using standard batteries is great and all, but if my current phone used 3 AAA's, it would almost double in size.
I have bought two digital cameras in the last couple of years and both have been Canon. Two reasons. First both cameras take AA batteries -- either Alkaline or Nickle metal hydride. Second is that the firmware in the camera is upgradeable and there are upgrades from sources other than Canon. Now I have not upgraded the firmware, and have no plans right now to do so -- but at least Canon did not weld the hood shut! The ability to use standard batteries was the BIGGEST single factor in selecting these two cameras. If Panasonic wants to go lock down proprietary then they are off my list of possibles from the beginning.
Any battery with the same specifications should work..
At the risk of incipient tar-and-feathering, let me offer a contrasting point of view.
All batteries are not alike. The length of a proper battery specification for a consumer application is enormous (several hundred pages), and usually includes a requirement along the lines of, "No change shall be made to an approved product [i.e., the battery], whether or not such change affects performance to the specifications herein, without prior express written consent of the XYZ Corporation" -- in other words, once it's working in our application don't change anything, whether or not we've thought to control that parameter in the spec. The problem is, the consumer has no way of knowing that the battery he's buying actually meets the product's battery specification -- and there are plenty of motivational reasons for the knockoff battery supplier to cut corners. Even an ethical battery manufacturer has to work very closely with the consumer product design team to understand the details of the battery specification.
I spent 25 years designing portable products for consumer applications, and I stand before this frenzied mob to say that one of the largest problems one faces when engineering these products are non-standard batteries. The consumer buys a knockoff battery, and when the product sooner or later (a) catches fire, (b) has terrible battery life, or (c) exhibits some unusual behavior, I am here to tell you that the consumer will blame the product, rather than the battery, 100% of the time, driving warranty costs through the roof. This leads to incredible feats of over-engineering in the product itself, to account for as many types of battery variation as the engineering staff can think of, and that the development program cost and time goals allow. The ability to design for a specific type of battery -- and only that type of battery -- was a luxury often discussed among the engineers with which I worked, since we knew we were adding cost, size, and weight to our designs as "defensive engineering" against the knockoffs.
I can see that you remain unconvinced, so let me give you a few examples of battery specifications, and the problems caused when they are not met.
1. Internal resistance. Batteries do not all source the same amount of current when given the same load. Take a dozen manganese-dioxide AAA batteries from a dozen battery vendors around the world. Periodically place, say, a 10-ohm resistor across their terminals, and measure the voltage across the battery terminals over time. The difference between the open-circuit battery voltage and the voltage under load is controlled by the internal resistance of the battery. A fresh, good cell from a reputable manufacturer will have an internal resistance of approximately 1 to 1.5 ohms, so the voltage under load remains high, approaching the open-circuit voltage.
A cell from a less reputable manufacturer can have an internal resistance of several dozen ohms; when this cell is placed in a product that draws, say, 100 mA from its battery (for example, when sending an audible alert, or turning on a few LEDs), the battery voltage seen by the product can drop from the nominal 1.3 V to as low as 0.3 V, usually leading to a system reset. The consumer, of course, knows only that that crappy product from XYZ Corporation doesn't work (or stopped working sooner than expected, or does funny stuff when the volume knob is set too high); there's no way for him to know the internal resistance of the battery he bought.
Note that the internal resistance of all batteries increases as the battery is discharged, so a major part of power management in portable products is addressing this issue. Frequently, especially in products with high peak-to-average current drain ratios, battery internal resistance, rather than energy exhaustion itself, is the factor that determines battery life, so how fast internal resistance changes over the life of the bat
Monopoly doesn't mean "I want this specific product, and only one company makes it;" rather, it applies to an entire broad category of goods that are generally related. Or do you think that Nikon holds a monopoly on 70-200mm f/2.8 vibration-reducing lenses that fit Nikon bodies?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
This is a good example of the razor blade principal. Most of these manufacturers make more off of consumables and add-ons than they do with the prime unit. Pretty soon these camera manufacturers will make it so you need to purchase their flash drives as well as their batteries, at a premium of more than double what you'd pay for the same thing from any reliable 3rd party. That was certainly the case of the backup battery I purchased for my Casio camera. Theirs was over $45. The replacement from a major battery manufacturer was about $15, shipping included! As far as I can tell, there is about zero difference in their performance and time-to-discharge or recharge. I'd guess that the replacement only differed in the label. They probably manufactured the OEM batteries as well.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Due to a recent upgrade in my own firmware, my wallet no longer accepts proprietary lock-in batteries. It is critical to the proper functioning of my wallet that being able to freely choose from many sources any product I chose. As a result, my wallet is no longer compatible with Panasonic batteries, or (as a result) cameras.
Where am i going to get a flat battery for my camera?
if you know 99% of people - your answer to that questions seems to indicate that you do.
My Canon HF-11 camcorder is able to detect and display remaining battery capacity for genuine Canon batteries (perhaps due to extra circuitry, but refuses to even attempt to do so for non-Canon batteries. It beats locking them out like Panasonic is doing, though.
... think of the children?! Where am I going to go for my 3rd party battery explosion lottery kicks now?
Sadly, the "DMCA-enabled battery" asshattery is not a new idea - well-known chipmakers such as Dallas-Maxim have been pushing cryptographic battery-lockout and ID chips directly to electronic engineering departments for years now. I've been personally seeing these ads in EE trade rags since at least '06. And yes, they trot out the claim that it will "improve safety" by locking out "inferior knockoff" batteries (or more to the point, shield you from liability), and that it's totally not a vendor lock-in thing at all. Sadly, part of me is actually surprised that it took this long for a mainstream manufacturer to take the bait. Anyway, we know how it will end (Sega v. Accolade, Lexmark vs. SCC, Magnuson-Moss Act, as other posters have pointed out), but you already know who foots the bill for the de rigeur years of lawyering it will take to reach that zero-sum result.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Every dcraw-based software can open correctly LX3 raws. This was to me the 2nd most important selling point of this camera, 1st being the fabulous optic. (I've never liked canon glasses, but I reckon that's just me).
This is precisely the reason I still have my Canon A70 even though I have newer, shinier, and swanker cameras around the place. The A70 may be old and chunky and have most of its silvery finish flaked off, but it still takes fantastic photos and runs off of four bog standard, regular old, available anywhere at any hour AA cells. A set of high capacity NiMh rechargeables, by preference, but it can run for a while on alkalines in a pinch.
When civilization falls and the roaches take over, my stupid old-fashioned camera will still work, because I guarantee you the roaches will still use AA's in their TV remotes or something. Cameras powered by little proprietary lithium ion packs may be slimmer or sleeker or whatever, but I'll take the capacity to use standard cells any day.
I notice printer manufacturers are doing this nowadays as well, including the very same Canon. Guess who is going to have his Pixma iP5000 (with non-chipped ink cartridges) pried from his cold, dead fingers?
And if they're really all that worried about third-party batteries not being as "high quality" as theirs, they would stop at the error/warning message but still let the damn things work. Let the consumer decide whether to continue using them
excellent - there are so many good cameras to choose from and many models over many manufacturers that it is impossible to keep up with. panasonic has just made life easier cause I can now eliminate their entire life from my list of options i have to follow. thanx guys!
At least their "update" isn't mandatory. And at least it actually tells you what its going to do.
Now, if the next firmware update that comes down the pipe says, "You can't install this update until you install the previous one," then I'd say we have a legitimate beef. Otherwise, just don't install it.
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Then the simple solution is to have the firmware record the batteries used. If the camera detects a 3rd party battery then toggle a warranty voiding bit in the firmware. If they want to be nice about it give the user a warning first (i.e. toggle the bit if the 3rd party battery is used twice or some such). Admittedly this assumes the warranty bit is readable when the camera is brought in for work but I'm willing to bet it would be unless the damage was catastrophic (in which case there would probably be other evidence of what kind of battery was used).
Before we write these guys off as 100% evil:
I'm not familiar with all Panasonic cameras, but the ones I've seen use Li-Ion batteries. I have read reports of some cheap Li-Ions literally exploding in appliances, and know of at least one in my area that caught fire a minute after being taken /out/ of an appliance, possibly after breaking down internally due to high current drain.
I think Panasonic have gone completely the wrong way about this, having thrown the baby out with the bathwater, but there may be some logic to it other than HP-ink-style profiteering. If it was me I'd simply make the warranty not cover damage caused by 3rd party batteries and be done with it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Or maybe you never go out taking pictures in remote locations. Most DSLRS will give you around 300 pics max if you use stuff like long exposure, and even less if you are in to live view.
So what if you are on a day long shooting session in a remote location. You run back to your hotel to charge battery? Or you just pop in a new one?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
At least (apparently) the 5Dm2 doesn't lock out other batteries, just not offer the new features that the new batteries support.
It'd be cool if devices warned you "This isn't our battery", just in case you bought a fake, but if I knowingly buy a legitimate 3rd-party product I want to to work.
Fundamental Theorem of Calculus?
I don't know, that sort of action sounds painful...
Yes, just like MS is allready doing with its OS ...
To bad that, just like MS, such scheckings will regulary fail (among others, because someone else hijacked its identity), leaving you with a legit battery that refuses to work.
Do you really want to be forced to jump to all kinds of hoops (read: be treated like a criminal) to re-activate your battery while being fully certain you are the legit buyer ?
MS is a monopolist, those camera-makers are not. The end-result will be that such "proof that you're innocent" methods (which probably will be at the worst-possible moments : when you have someything you actually want to put on film, like your grand-daughters first steps) will either cause people 1) to drop those cameras/companies as hot potatoes 2) look for methods to hack the camera, making them realize that being "unlawfull" has got its (big!) benefits (alike "hacking" music-CDs, films and games, just to be able to listen to them, see them or play them on any of the devices they own, without being harssed about it), detoriorating the respect they have for what the law seems to demand from them.
Don't get me wrong, I think that it is a terrible, vicious, screw-the-customer kind of measure. Anybody responsible for such a system deserves to be against the wall when the revolution comes(not first; but there'll be plenty of room in line). I merely wished to note that authentication mechanisms in an online environment are overwhelmingly stronger and harder to escape than in an offline one.
... that in order to detect the non-Panasonic battery and warn you about it, it needs to draw power from these "dangerous" batteries, right?
I had a cheapie Vivitar digital camera. It worked well enough, until one day it died -- it developed some kind of internal short that superheated the batteries. It was REALLY hot. Batteries did not split, leak, or pop. In fact, they recharged ok. Camera was quite dead, however.
And then when it catches on fire, burning your house down? Who do you sue?
lawyer: Mr. WNight, were you using a Panasonic battery?
WNight: Of course I was.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Say goodbye to the Panasonic camera market. I won't be buying one of these pieces of crap.
Companies making radios, torchlights, wireless keyboards and mice and countless other devices can use standard batteries without any issues.
Panasonic, and any other brain dead manufacturers that think we are stupid, should get out of the business of policing the battery industry (yeah right, they do it only to protect their consumers) and leave battery safety and regulation to trade government agencies and consumer advocates.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Don't but from Ebay unless you can afford to lose your toy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Then design your device to detect bad batteries. Any funny current, voltage or resistance readings and the device should tell you that something is going amiss and shut down in extreme cases.
Record in an internal memory an history of these warnings and let consumers know what you are doing and why (instead of the inane booklets with great offers to join inane websites or register your warranty, like if that was necessary at all).
This inane "solution" is immoral and reprehensible in all accounts.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh wait, there aren't any.
Sorry for entering you weird alternate reality space....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, sounds a lot like 'pound me in the ass' customer care. If Panasonic had the market share of , say, Cannon, they might get away with it. Let's "send them a message" like NFW.
Yeah, that's why my Canon HF100 camcorder pops up an "unable to communicate with battery, Continue? Y/N" message when I use a non-Canon battery.
I'm a huge Canon fan, I just bought an EOS 500D which is my 6th Canon camera and 2nd DSLR, but with their current HD camcorders they've started down the dark path. But at least they will run with the aftermarket battery; the Pano apparently just shuts down.
The safety thing is a load of crap. Every company has had meltdowns even with OEM batteries; Sony, Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia, etc, in laptops, batteries, MP3 players, phones.
I've never bought a single Canon branded battery for any of my cameras, always 3rd party, and I've never had a bit of trouble with any of them, and when I cracked them open at end of life (after several years of use) even the cheapest ones did have proper protective circuitry in them.
The ONLY thing OEMs have to sell their batteries over 3rd party ones is FUD. OEM cameras for my new SLR are $50 at online prices, the cheapos that I bought instead were about $11 each, and they work actually a little better than the original battery that came with the camera. Every time the topic comes up on photography forums, the only argument against is "an aftermarket battery might catch fire and ruin your camera".
ISTM that from a legal standpoint, they'd be better off with a warning on the box. Because IMO all batteries including Pano are capable of blowing up, when a Pano battery DOES catch fire, doesn't the fact that they took steps to exclude others from the market indicate increased culpability for fires that do occur?
If they just left it alone, when the battery caught fire the could just point at the stats and say "yeah, LiIon batteries do that sometimes. Sorry. We'll replace the camera." But by issuing this firmware, they have in effect claimed that their batteries are safe but others are not, so they can't use industry stats to show that battery fires are statistically going to happen sometimes, and they may be open for increased liability.
When I read someting like this, or that ink jet printers reject non-original or refilled cartidges, I wonder why are EU and USA govts going after MSFT for including IE in Windows FOR FREE and leave these ?%$%#$ alone... At least you can install and use some other browser and ignore IE competely, there is no lock-up
...I'm fine enough with them doing this. Something about a lack of quality from that region of the world comes to mind.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Period. My #1 critera for a digital camera is it must use a standardized battery-- because what good is it a couple of years down the road when the model is discontinued and the manufacturer of the camera doesn't make batteries anymore?
And yet, any AA battery will work in any device which takes AA batteries.
Sorry, no. An "AA battery" isn't even an electrical specification, because it specifies only the mechanical size of the cell. It can be a carbon-zinc cell, a manganese dioxide ("alkaline") cell, a rechargeable nickel-cadmium cell, or even a lithium cell, just to name a few. (If you're still not convinced, look at this list, and try to develop a way for the product to determine even what kind of lithium cell it's been connected to.) The designer of the product has to consider how his product will behave when the consumer puts each of these in his product, and design around them -- for "anything not expressly prohibited is guaranteed to occur."
The reason you can say that "any AA battery will work in any device which takes AA batteries" is because (1) it's not really true, because your sample size is only a small set of what's available world-wide, and (2) the engineers of the consumer product have designed in extra circuitry, at the cost of money, size, and weight, to avoid or minimize undesirable behavior when all of these possibilities do occur -- circuitry you pay for when you buy the product, and have to lug around when you carry it.
Oh, and the protection circuitry has to be in the battery because if the battery terminals are shorted, the product is unpowered, while the battery is attempting to ignite. Think about it.
Leaks usually take years to develop when batteries from reputable manufacturers are used. In the second and third world, a lot of the batteries available to consumers are from local manufacturers, who make batteries that, well, leak early and often.
How long batteries last can very much be a part of the specs, since it is often very much not a function of how much energy they contain. The internal resistance, not the stored energy, of a battery frequently determines end of life, especially if there is a low-voltage threshold below which a system reset or other undesired behavior results.
Note that it's often difficult for the product itself to determine when the battery is exhausted: Different cell chemistries have different voltage profiles, and their voltages vary under load. Determining a battery's state of charge is actually a difficult engineering problem, even if you know exactly what the battery is.
It's good there's no other source of evidence, such as forensic, financial, etc that could be used to tell if that was the truth.
I've always had problems with Panasonic products, from electric pencil sharpeners to cordless phones. Poor user interfaces and fragile.
Table-ized A.I.
Camera is complete slag, receipts all burned, paid with cash... who would know?
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
If anyone ever says you're a jerk, think back to this and maybe you'll understand why.
You're taking a rare occurrence (a battery malfunctioning), assuming the worst circumstances (a full house fire), going beyond that to assume that there are absolutely no remaining useful records, and that the customer would automatically win in this lawsuit. Also that they don't exploit the total lack of records to blame their space-heater, dishwasher, TV, etc.
And on that stupid pretense of an argument you're jumping up and down waving for attention as if you have something useful to add.
You don't see any of the holes in your argument. For example, wouldn't the fact that Panasonic cameras were known to not run on 3rd-party batteries actually imply greater responsibility if their camera was found to have caused a fire. This isn't to imply that you should continue in this discussion, but that you should examine your ideas to see if they are ultimately weak and drop them. You don't appear to be doing any of this basic critical thinking.
Yes, we understand that in some circumstances this could be useful to the camera company, but we also understand that all the reasons are contrived to support battery $ales, not based on actual concern for customer property or stray lawsuits. If they were just honestly greedy it would be one thing, but the way they spin it as a pro-customer move is rude.
Well, I don't want to lower myself to your level of being insulting, but your argument is naive. Since when are laws and lawsuits based upon clear logical thinking? They're based on an often emotional and inconsistent legal system where it's best to CYA.
I'm speaking from a perspective of having been in mass-deployed product liability meetings. I know the kinds of arguments that influence the decision makers. Discount it if you want by calling me a jerk or believing that the point you're trying to make is the right one since you're obviously a great intellect.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I'm speaking from a perspective of having been in mass-deployed product liability meetings. I know the kinds of arguments that influence the decision makers.
Yeah, of course. Anything that stands to make or save them money. And yes, this certainly would save them some tiny bit from reducing lawsuits and make them a ton via increased battery sales.
You made no point, you merely repeated their claims that they're doing this to avoid great and unfair settlements.
This'd be like you merely repeating the TSA's ban on containers over 100ml on a flight and claiming you understood their arguments - a total non-sequitur.
And it's all a red-herring because you never offer a glimpse of these real motives.
Discount it if you want by calling me a jerk
If you think that was insulting you're a coddled child, and if you can't read your latest post and see what I mean, you're hopeless.
At each step you write as if what you're saying is the final-word on the subject. You act like your stupid court scenario was definitive, try to shore it up as if my complaints were trivial and pretend it was still definitive, and come back to play this misunderstood expert - oh, if only I'd endeavored to learn more from you while I had the chance!
But in examination you've said nothing of value, and played the victim when I've gone out of my way to coddle you through the explanation of your social gaffe. Your "You: Lie to judge" scenario was insulting and while your "lawsuits cost money" point is true, it is trivial and has flaws you didn't seem to realize and were failing to address.
you're obviously a great intellect.
Thank you, but spotting the self-serving nature in an action like Panasonic's is really easy. No customers asked for the feature so it's obviously not something for customers. And that's all we're bitching about - that 'they' always sell these money-grubbing or CYA moves as for-the-customer. And that people like you crawl out of the woodwork to obfuscate this.