Now this may seem strange but for some reason my Canon FS100 camcorder which I’ve only had since August has ceased charging through the supplied cable.  After some testing with a complicated multimeter no power seems to be getting to the camcorder so the charger box must be broken. Now I’ve had it static on my desk for nearly all this time so I was a bit surprised when it just stopped. I’ve tried to contact Canon as it is under the initial 12 month warranty but I got an automatic fob off to some repair centre over 150 miles away. I’ll have to try again sometime but surely they could give me an address to send it to?? I would have expected Canon to be better, for once I praise Sony for their customer service early in 2008.

So I turned to the world of eBay and bought an external battery wall charger for £15 which arrived a week later.  It even comes with an extra battery so what a benefit. Extra battery life! Can never have enough of that!  One thing though is as the extra battery is not official Canon merchandise it does not have the ability to tell the camcorder how long is left which is a bit confusing. So it may be all well and good when I have that extra time to shoot but not knowing how long is left!? I don’t blame the battery but Canon’s decision and method to implement time remaining features in the camcorder.

But it does work, and ever since I have charged my battery through that means, now it is more hassle as I have to take it out of the camcorder itself but it’s the best option I have.  Another advantage is I can charge one battery up while I’m using the other one in the camcorder if I’m unable to use the power cable with the camcorder at the shoot location.  So if you’re out there looking for another way to charge your BP-808 camcorder battery then here is another way, there are plenty on eBay so why not get one.

p.s Don’t you love getting packages from China with misspellings on them? Bad English brightens my day when it is badly translated. On the back of the pack there were a couple of interesting statements…