Battery Life - Canon (AA Batteries) & Panasonic Rechargeable

I'm with you on AA batteries -- when I bought a secondhand camera I wasn't going to risk having to find as much again for replacing an aging proprietary battery. But, of course, cameras eat regular batteries pretty rapidly.

The solution for your Canon is to use the best rechargeable NiMH AAs you can find as these outlast non-rechargeables and last far longer than NiCads. Investigate the new Duracell (and no doubt other brands) rechargeables which come fully charged ready to use.

However, none of these have the staying power of the Lithium Iron (LI-ON)batteries supplied with more advanced cameras. The problem comes when, eventually, you have to replace these. Original branded batteries can be expensive, so a secondary market has grown up to supply substitutes. In the case of Panasonic Lumix there were complaints when they introduced chipped batteries with certain models. This deliberately excluded non-Panasonic batteries on grounds of safety, but perhaps to protect Panasonic's income stream. In fact, there are perfectly good substitutes out there.

Until Panasonic reverses this policy, I would steer clear of the brand and stick with Canon. Jessop's, the big chain seller in the UK openly recommend non-Canon batteries, even for top of the range models.