Collecting could be seen as a series of chance developments. I acquired a Canon A-1 for very little money because it didn’t fire. I cleaned it up—a lot of my hobby is spent with cotton tipped swabs and a lot of polishing—but had no way to see if it could work. The Canon “A” series need a 544 battery. I had been told with a 544 battery the camera was dead in the water, but I always have hopes it could have been a poor 544 battery or bad contact in the battery compartment was the problem. So the camera was put aside pending developments in the future.
Flash forward to this week. I spotted a bag with a lot of AG-13/LR44 alkaline button cells in it at a thrift store on a day I got 30 per cent off. For $3.66 I bought 80 cells in packs of 10.
I was aware you can buy quantities of batteries on the internet, but I don’t buy much on the internet. Certainly not 100 batteries! Still, with the batteries in hand I could pass some on to friends and try to build a 544 battery.
“Build a PX544 battery?” you ask.
Well it is a fact many batteries are made from stacks of individual cells. Batteries have a voltage per cell of 1.37 or 1.5 volts, depending on materials used to build them. Most silver oxide batteries are 1.37 V. These are the preferred batteries for long life and steady output, used in cameras that have built-in meters (and watches). Alkaline batteries are cheaper, 1.5 volts in output, but that voltage drops with age and use so find use more on toys and flashlights.
So a PX544 battery is actually made of four AG-13/LR44 batteries. Because the PX544 battery has its own housing and ends—the plus end has a raised contact while the negative end is flat—simply stacking four LR44 batteries ends up just a tad short of the full size of the PX544. Luckily the four LR44 batteries being 1.5 volts each, four adds up to the correct 6 volts.
Long ago I had found a certain sized plastic straw—the kind used more for shakes and Slurpees—will encase the LR44 sized cell. It was a simple matter to unwrap four batteries, wipe their ends and then use the straw to pile them up until I had a stack of four. I marked the straw so I knew where to cut it. You want the cells held in line, but you don’t need extra plastic getting in your way when you install the pack in the camera.
I stuck the pack in the battery compartment and was left with a small gap at the end. I took a piece of aluminum foil and folded it until I had a tiny thick wad I could press into the space on the end to force the batteries tightly together in the compartment.
To my joy the camera came to life!
It isn’t perfect of course. The shutter has the wheeze the A-Series develops in old age. It sounds bad, but isn’t a huge operational problem. The display under the viewfinder acted strangely until I set the switch next to the pentaprism hump so the white dot was visible. Then the display worked fine.
I can take the battery stack out of the compartment, remove the batteries and leave the plastic tube and aluminum wad for the next time I want to play with the A-1. I gave away two packs of batteries, so still have 60 batteries in hand. And a working A-1 camera.
All in all, a pretty successful day of collecting!
Flash forward to this week. I spotted a bag with a lot of AG-13/LR44 alkaline button cells in it at a thrift store on a day I got 30 per cent off. For $3.66 I bought 80 cells in packs of 10.
I was aware you can buy quantities of batteries on the internet, but I don’t buy much on the internet. Certainly not 100 batteries! Still, with the batteries in hand I could pass some on to friends and try to build a 544 battery.
“Build a PX544 battery?” you ask.
Well it is a fact many batteries are made from stacks of individual cells. Batteries have a voltage per cell of 1.37 or 1.5 volts, depending on materials used to build them. Most silver oxide batteries are 1.37 V. These are the preferred batteries for long life and steady output, used in cameras that have built-in meters (and watches). Alkaline batteries are cheaper, 1.5 volts in output, but that voltage drops with age and use so find use more on toys and flashlights.
So a PX544 battery is actually made of four AG-13/LR44 batteries. Because the PX544 battery has its own housing and ends—the plus end has a raised contact while the negative end is flat—simply stacking four LR44 batteries ends up just a tad short of the full size of the PX544. Luckily the four LR44 batteries being 1.5 volts each, four adds up to the correct 6 volts.
Long ago I had found a certain sized plastic straw—the kind used more for shakes and Slurpees—will encase the LR44 sized cell. It was a simple matter to unwrap four batteries, wipe their ends and then use the straw to pile them up until I had a stack of four. I marked the straw so I knew where to cut it. You want the cells held in line, but you don’t need extra plastic getting in your way when you install the pack in the camera.
I stuck the pack in the battery compartment and was left with a small gap at the end. I took a piece of aluminum foil and folded it until I had a tiny thick wad I could press into the space on the end to force the batteries tightly together in the compartment.
To my joy the camera came to life!
It isn’t perfect of course. The shutter has the wheeze the A-Series develops in old age. It sounds bad, but isn’t a huge operational problem. The display under the viewfinder acted strangely until I set the switch next to the pentaprism hump so the white dot was visible. Then the display worked fine.
I can take the battery stack out of the compartment, remove the batteries and leave the plastic tube and aluminum wad for the next time I want to play with the A-1. I gave away two packs of batteries, so still have 60 batteries in hand. And a working A-1 camera.
All in all, a pretty successful day of collecting!
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