[craig1024]

My plastic covers came with my generic spare batteries, of which I have no complaints. I bought the bateries from a forum member for $10 each

[Nowhere Matt]

Helluva bump.

I just wanted to open a discussion about charging these batteries.
I often notice that when charging the Minolta NP400 batteries, the last several minutes of charging, the red light on the Pentax charger will flash in a uniform tempo before stopping to signal that the charging is complete. With the Pentax D-L150, the light is constant until it goes out and charging is complete.
It also seems that they both charge in the same amount of time even with the slight differences in amps for hour but when the charger is flashing like this, is this perhaps like the charger "topping off" the battery's cells? And the Pentax is just built differently to accept a charge until it is full and then shuts off?

[THAN THE SWORD]

I got two batteries with my K10D when I bought the kit from Cameta and they worked just fine. I finally had to break down and buy two more when I had a couple of incidents where I ran out of power. I either took too many shots or the tempature was too low or a combination.

I went with the site that offered third party batteries for some low price, something like $3 USD.

Once you have the extra batteries, management is important. I have the grip and only use the battery in the grip. It's easier to replace without having to remove the grip when a battery dies on me. I keep all 3 batteries fully charged and ready to swap out. I have not run out of power since and I feel better not having to remove the grip so many times.

I labeled each of the batteries so I can keep track of which one is which and have not noticed better performance (or worse) from any one.