Battery Grips

A battery grip is a physical extension that provides extra functionality for cameras. Unlike regular camera grips, battery grips have many features and functionalities. The most obvious one among them being the additional battery life that they give.

The earliest models of cameras used to have a winding spring mechanism that powered the movement of the film roll and also the shutter control. But when batteries became small enough to fit inside a camera body, they became the standard. However, at that time, a single battery powered camera would only let you take around a hundred pictures before you need to replace the batteries. Over the decades, this increased to around a thousand shots per battery. But even that is not enough for professional work. If you are somebody who takes a lot of pictures or shoots hours of footage at one stretch, you should consider buying a battery grip for the camera.

Pros and Cons of using battery grips

One way to be able to do more with your camera is to carry multiple fully charged batteries with you whenever you go for a shoot. However, then you will need to charge those batteries and switch them when they run out. While this might not be a big deal for a casual user, it might be a chore for a professional photographer. That’s when a battery grip can come in handy. Below is a list of the pros and cons of using them. This will help you decide whether or not you should get one. Moreover, you can use the tips from this article to help you buy the right type of grip.

Better ergonomics

If you hold your camera for a long time with one hand, your fingers will start to hurt. This is not a problem that only people with large hands face. However, a battery grip can be a solution to this problem. The battery grip increases the area where the right hand rests, providing you with more space to hold the camera comfortably. This gives you a more ergonomic grip with a wider body for resting your palm and gripping with your fingertips. This is the reason why most professional cameras, like Canon 1 Dx, come with a wider, square-shaped body.

Better battery life

As you can probably understand from the name, battery grips effectively extend the battery life of the camera. Most grips will, essentially, double the battery life of the camera! While most DSLRs let you take more than a thousand shots with a single battery, you can shoot more than two or three thousand pictures if you have a battery grip. This is a huge advantage for those who do video work. This can help to film an all-day event without a lot of downtimes or let you capture longer time-lapse videos with your camera.

Camera becomes heavier

This is one downside of using a battery grip. Increased weight of the camera is the biggest problem of battery grips. The Canon 6D Mark II with one battery weight about 1.7 lbs. If you swap the battery for a battery grip, this becomes about 2.7 lbs. That’s almost a 60 per cent weight increase without a lens! With handheld shooting over a long period of time, this can be a huge issue. However, if you are using a tripod for the major portion of the shooting, you won’t feel like this is a problem.

Larger size

We already talked about how a bigger camera body is easier to hold. But the large size can also have some negative effects. When the body gets bigger, you will need a bigger camera bag as well. That means you will also have to get a new camera bag. Most battery grips will add a height of 1.7 inches to the camera. Also, you might no longer be able to put your camera on a gimbal designed for normal DSLRs as the bigger body needs more clearance between the rotating parts of the gimbal. That being said, you can use the normal batteries when using a grip becomes inconvenient.