Hi all
As some of you might know already I'm a zoo keeper, and I was helping a Danish
photographer today who wanted to shoot the elks (moose for you in the US) at the
Safaripark for a Danish newspaper. My job was to make the elks walk by his
camera
so that these pictures of the elks themselves later could be cut out and
inserted
into pictures of the new Öresunds bridge with the help of a computer. Obviously
the idea was to create pictures where the elks seemed to walk across the bridge!
(It might be added that normally there are no elks in Denmark, but last year a
wild elk swim across the straits from Sweden to Denmark and this of course
caused
big headlines in some Danish newspapers)
Well, he was using an old Leica M6 as well as a new Hasselblad XPan camera, both
with winders attached. After having expended a lot of films with both cameras
(maybe 10-15 rolls of film) he encountered some kind of problem with the Leica
winder. He removed the battery chamber to check the batteries, and suddenly
there
was a small cracking noise which quickly made him put the battery chamber on the
ground. When I asked what happended he said that the batteries had exploded!
Obviously at least some of the batteries had cracked.
What could have caused this? I can't say whether he was using NiCa or NiMh
batteries, but I think the battery brand was EverReady. It was rather cold (-3°
C)
and windy. Could the freezing temperature cause the batteries to be exhausted
and
overheated? I suppose they can explode if they are overcharged (at least NiCa?),
but in the camera? The photographer's only theory was that it was caused by the
use of low quality batteries, but obviously he hadn't a clue. Fortunately he
could
continue to use his Leica, albeit without the winder. Anyone with similar
experience and/or a theory to what caused the batteries to explode?
Per Nordenberg
Kolmården, Sweden
--
To look into the eyes of the wolf is to look into ones' soul.
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