Pitting batteries head to head: Canon vs third party (VIDEO)

We've all been tempted by it before. Why buy a first party piece of hardware when someone else is making one that's almost identical for half the price? For some things, it doesn't seem to hugely matter (say, a flash diffuser), but for others it might make all the difference between getting a few final shots, and being stranded with a dead camera. Dave Dugdale of Learning DSLR Video put together a quick comparison of a Canon LP-E6, and a third-party Watson LP-E6 equivalent (which goes for around half the price).

The result? His year old Canon battery recorded 1 hour and 28 minutes of footage, and the brand new, unused Watson lasted for 1 hour and 9 minutes.

Now, this is just a small, extremely limited test (and Dugdale has said he plans to return to it in a year to see how it handles over time). Ideally, something like this would be run multiple times, with multiple batteries from each manufacturer, all of which are new. But even so, it's an indication of a very real problem. You simply don't know how well a third party accessory like this will stack up to the real thing.

And it's an experience that seems born out by many of the commenters at NoFilmSchool who have seen similar problems.

So, for our readers, have any of you used third party batteries? How did they work for you?

(via NoFilmSchool)