Voltage converter for battery charger

[whemmy]

I am travelling to Italy from the US and was wondering if anyone knows if I need to bring a voltage converter to charge my batteries? Or is a plug adaptor all that is needed? Thanks!

[jrhoffman75]

Most modern electrical devices are dual voltage. Look at the label and see if it says 240 volts. 

[Anonymous]

Canon warns in the manual against using a voltage converter on their chargers. It will cause the charger to burn up. Someone borrowed my camera (T2i) and used a voltage converter in India. Charger was fried. I believe that most Canon chargers are dual voltage as was stated, and should work without a voltage converter, just need a plug adaptor.

[wq9nsc]

As John stated, the charger will have a label indicating if it is designed to work around the world on 100-240 VAC 50 or 60 hertz.  Everything I have purchased from Canon has this capability but check the label on your charger.

NEVER use a typical "travel converter" with electronic products unless it is specifically labeled for that use.  Most travel converters are designed to work with hair dryers and other products with heaters and/or a universal motor.  Electronic items like your power supply expect a fairly pure sine wave input while the simple travel converters provide a very dirty spiky output that will damage electronic items. 

Electronic items require a step down transformer instead of a simple converter circuit and those get very heavy at anything over a 25 to 50 watt rating so if your travel converter is rated for several hundred to over 1,000 watts and it is lighter than a Canon EF 800 f5.6, DON'T plug anything electronic in to it 😁

Label from Canon LC-E19 charger below showing typical labeling for modern multi-voltage device:

Rodger