Photographers nowadays carry a small collection of batteries – for each camera system, action cameras, drones, speedlights, triggers and more. Unfortunately, those batteries also have their own chargers.
If you’re travelling, you can easily fill one bag with all your chargers. Or you can risk not bringing a charger. If you’re like me, you’ve probably lost or misplaced at least one charger. Replacement OEM chargers range from $60 to $100 each. And many newer cameras don’t come with a charger – you have to supply your own USB power supply. What happens if you have to charge your phone and your camera at the same time?
You can’t get much easier to use than UniPal Plus. Slide the cover to the left, hold your battery so you can see where the + and – contacts are and spin the two grey wheels below the bright LCD screen until the pins line up with the battery contacts. Then stand your battery up. See the photo below.
It’s important that you line up the pins ONLY with the + and – negative battery contacts. Your battery won’t charge if you align one of the pins to the centre contact – that’s a communication contact (you were dying to know that, weren’t you?). It doesn’t matter if you align + on the left and – on the right or vice versa. It only matters that you have one pin on the + battery contact and one pin on the – battery contact.
The LCD shows the battery percentage, both as a number and a graphical element. The display will change if you’re charging from the USB port or AA/AAA batteries.
There are lots of universal chargers that might look the same, but UniPal Plus offers some unique features that will make it your first-choice charger. The first bonus is that it’s dual power – it comes with a DC adapter so you can use it in your car to charge batteries between locations. That would have saved me some grief a few years ago!
I still use my Hahnel ProCube2 on my desk, as I can charge two camera batteries simultaneously. However, my travel bag now features the UniPal Plus instead of all my different chargers and AC blocks. It’s great to have one charger to replace them all – more room for lenses now!
About the Author – Will Prentice (www.capturaphoto.ca) is a professional photographer based out of Whitby, Ontario and Brand Specialist – Lighting for Amplis.
