@cale_kat wrote:
Skirball, thanks for the thoughtful reply.
You're welcome. Thank you for the conversation. There's too little discourse here, and too much bickering and pithy attacks. I'm always happy to discuss ideas, but there's a tendency online to simply take offense and retort just because someone has a different opinion than you.
@cale_kat wrote:
I'm not immune to risk, but I'm aware that percieved risk and actual risk can be two different things. You mentioned the batteries as another place to "cut corners" where it comes to budgeting for photograhy. You wrote that your perceived risk of doing so was low. Yet there is little evidence to support that the battery you have choosen to use is less, or just as, reliable as the Canon battery. (IMHO, the failure of a battery is just as bad as a failed memory card because it can also cause you to "miss the shot".)
I think there is actually a decent amount of data to support concern. Perhaps not formal data from a controlled test, at least not on Canon dslr batteries, but there is data of sorts. I take Amazon reviews with a grain of salt, people on the internet are quick to simply complain and give 1 star because something didn't work out the way they wanted. However, if you look up generic Canon batteries on there you will see a ton of reviews stating that the battery died out after a few weeks, or would only give XXX shots compared to the YYY they got with their Canon battery. You can certainly argue the quality of this data, but it's in large enough quantity to be of use. You won’t see the same quantity of comments with Canon batteries. I've seen it myself with generics I’ve bought, although admittedly I haven’t done controlled tests and I’m well aware of the power of the placebo effect.
The same thing happens in standard alkaline like AA batteries. Like the crappy ones that come with electronics that hardly last at all. Even in rechargeables you’ll see considerable performance differences between quality batteries and cheapos. I’m sure there’s plenty of data from controlled tests with AA batteries supporting this point.
But there’s more than just charge issues with generic batteries. I had one that would get stuck in the camera. I had to pull it out with needle nose pliers; the connector was designed poorly, too tight. I ended up wrapping dental floss around the battery to create a tether that I could pull it out with so it didn’t get stuck in there. Canon wouldn’t release a set of batteries like that. They’d recall the batch and send you one that worked properly.
@cale_kat wrote:
I could be completely wrong, but my interpretation of what you wrote is that as you move from the battery to the memory card, your perception of the consequences of a failure (or increase in perceived risk) grows greater. But there is no evidence that the risk is any greater than that taken with the third-party battery.
It may have been worded poorly on my part. I used the word perceived, because I don't actually have any data supporting that generic SD cards are unreliable, I admit I'm purely going from gut feeling on this one, and the risk vs benefit ratio I see.
My point was that the impact of a failure, and thus my risk, of a failed SD card is significantly more than a failed battery. With the battery I simply put in a new one. Moreso, it's a "failure mode" that happens to even good batteries. And there's a gauge on my camera to let me know that it's going to happen. And SD card failure on the other hand is spontaneous, and I may not even find out until after the shoot. And it could result in catastrophe. Hence, in a risk vs benefit analysis, I see significantly more risk to a generic SD card than battery. To your point, I don’t have any data with which to assume that generics will fail more often than namebrand. And if I saw data showing them to be as reliable I would gladly switch. But without such data I simply compare the cost difference to the potential risk, and I decided that name brand is worth it to me.
