If you are like me and ever had a hard time going through the long list of all the available flights, you might be interested in the new search engine I recently developed: Book.green.

The main idea is to present the flights in a way that lets you easily compare the differences in route, duration, ecology and certainly price. Let’s have a look, picture is worth thousands words sometimes 😉

You can see flights grouped by routes, so that it’s easier to review all the available options. Another significant aspect is color coding of the results by their ecology. Simply, a greener flight produces less CO₂, while redder isn’t too eco-friendly. But more about this later. Filtering and sorting is done by clicks in the header or directly on individual results. For example, if you find a flight too long, click its duration and select ‘Show only shorter flights’ and it’s done. And fast! No page reloading, the filtering is instantaneous.

After clicking a flight, you get a detailed view, including warnings regarding the need to change terminals and other useful information. And, you can bookmark or book the flight, currently leading to Kiwi.com, other agencies to be added soon. In case you don’t know any particular airline or airport, you are just a click away from a detailed useful information:

Note that Book.green user interface also scales well to smaller screens of mobile devices, without losing any functionality:

Back to the ecology. Quite a few search engines today give a CO₂ figure in search results. However, Book.green goes further. Not only is the ecology in the forefront due to color coding of each flight, it also tries to calculate the emissions as precisely as possibly. It not only takes into account the distance between airports, but also the exact model of airplane used, its fuel consumption, seating arrangement of the particular airline and other aspects. This results in a useful figure that can help you to make a decision that’s good for you, but also for the planet.

If you want to review all the functionality, you can check out a short video, or just head out directly to Book.green and try it yourself.

I hope that you like the result, if so, please don’t forget the share with your friends! In any case, I’d be very interested in your feedback, feel free to post a comment here or just drop me an email. And, I promise that I’ll start posting more regularly to this site, mostly content related to the main subject of the site, photography! 😉

New battery brand, Patona Platinum, was added to the Fujifilm NP-W126S compatible battery test. Its capacity looks good and temperature management even better, so definitely recommended for European photographers (as it isn’t available in the US). Read more details in the test, which covers 14 different battery variants now!

And drop me a note in case your favorite (and widely available) battery is missing in the test… 😉

Hi all ultralightphotography.net readers! It has been quite a long time since I posted the last update here. No, I didn’t give up photography and neither this website! It’s just that I’ve been very busy and particularly with my new project Phoide, which I’d like to introduce briefly here, since I hope that it might be useful for many photographers.

Phoide aims to contain great photography spots all around the world in an easy to use web application with many convenient features that help photographers to plan where and when to go. This includes an easy to use map, descriptions, tips, sunrises/sunsets, weather forecasts, nearby webcams, spotlists, search and of course, beautiful photographs. There is already more than 10,000 photography spots and even more photographs from these spots!

Phoide is community edited, so anyone can create a new spot, add photographs to an existing spot, write own descriptions or tag spots. And, what’s really important, in case you find an error, for example a photograph that’s placed incorrectly, you can suggest the correct place and other photographers can confirm or reject the change.

Individual spots are grouped by Tags, which helps to navigate around locations, be it a country, town or any landmark. Photographers can also write their own guides to any tag, so that the location is no longer just a set of individual spots.

Phoide is currently available as a website (https://phoide.com), but there will also be mobile apps released soon (Android and iOS), which will further enhance the possibilities, including offline navigation to selected spots and more.

I hope that this sounds interesting to you! Please have a look and test the application to see whether it can be useful for you. I’d be very interested in your feedback, please drop me an e-mail, comment here or on Facebook. Thanks!

I updated the Fuji battery test with 5 more brands, which results in a very thorough test of 13 distinct types of NP-W126S compatible batteries! Some of them show pretty good performance, similar to the Fuji’s original batteries. The new brands are Watson, Wasabi, Green Extreme, Jupio and Baxxtar Red. Also structure of the test was slightly updated, presentation of results should be easier to read now. Enjoy!

I haven’t posted anything for a while, but there’s a huge update of the NP-W126 battery test coming. Not only the content will be restructured, but there will be 5 new brands tested! These brands are Watson, Wasabi, Green Extreme, Baxxtar and Jupio. Stay tuned!

I have already done quite a bit of measurements of several NP-W126S batteries, either originals or 3^rd party clones in my big test. However, I haven’t gone beyond the + and – terminals, while the batteries have 4 in total. It’s about time to correct this omission today!

A bit of theory

All Li-ion batteries obviously have at least two terminals: + and -. Some of them feature more than these two though, as is the case of NP-W126S, where also Ⓣ and Ⓢ are present. What are they for? Generally speaking, other terminals give more information about the battery, its temperature, charging state, capacity and possibly even other more detailed information. They can be provided as an analog value (usually measured as a resistance between the terminal and the ground (-) terminal) or as a digital value in case the battery employs a circuit called Battery Fuel Gauge, which is actually a small computer itself.

The provided values can be used by device to better handle the battery. Particularly during charging, it’s good to know battery temperature and in case there’s anything wrong and the temperature increases too much, charging can be terminated in order to prevent problems. And we are talking about some pretty serious problems in case of Li-ion batteries, including explosion or fire.

I haven’t found any documentation about NP-W126S terminals and so I tried to find out myself what are they used for.

The Ⓣ terminal

This one isn’t hard to decode, as the T usually stands for Thermistor, a special type of a resistor, which resistance changes with temperature. In case of NP-W126S it means that the resistance is about 10kΩ when the battery has roughly room temperature (20°C) and the resistance decreases as the temperature rises. It’s enough the hold the battery in hand for a while and the resistance drops to 9 or even 8kΩ.

Both the older original NP-W126 and the newer NP-W126S have this terminal with the same functionality. A bit disturbing fact is that none of the 3^rd party batteries that I own has the thermistor properly implemented. They only have a fixed 10kΩ resistor, which means that the connected device doesn’t have any information about the internal battery temperature!

I’d like to know, whether there’s any 3^rd party battery with a proper thermistor. If you own a battery that isn’t present in my test and have a multimeter to measure the resistance, please let me know your results in the comments below. Thanks!

The Ⓢ terminal

The S usually means Size, Status or System indicator, but what it does in case of Fujifilm batteries? I’m not sure. The resistance is 98kΩ for the older NP-W126 and all the 3rd party batteries, while the newer NP-W126S has 680kΩ. So, there’s definitely a way how to distinguish the ‘S’ battery version, but I’m not sure whether the terminal doesn’t also feature some digital interface provided by an internal Batter Fuel Gauge. To be investigated in the future.

Update: Patona Platinum doesn’t have any resistance on the Ⓢ terminal. Not sure whether it make any difference in various devices (e.g. X-T3).

Termianals usage in Chargers

The original Fujifilm BC-W126 charger supports all 4 terminals. As I tested, the Thermistor terminal is used — when it’s disconnected, the charger stops charging. On the contrary, all the other 3^rd party chargers I know only provide + and – and so the battery temperature isn’t measured at all. So, if you want to play it safe, use the original charger.

X-T2 terminals usage

While older Fujifilm X system cameras, like X-T1, only have the + and – terminals, the newer X-T2 features all 4 terminals provided by the NP-W126S. So, obviously it could use them to measure battery temperature and shut off as soon as the battery starts overheating. Or, they possibly could provide more accurate battery state of charge. Or, after a firmware update, X-T2 could even reject non-original batteries (just a speculation, of course).

Are these contact actually used? I don’t know. The camera normally works even when I covered the two additional contacts by a tape. So, possibly they aren’t used yet, but are ready there for some future use.

What does it all mean?

So are actually the original batteries safer than the alternatives? Apparently they are safer when charged in the original charger. The fact that none 3^rd party battery has a working temperature monitoring is quite surprising and makes one wonder, whether they are safe particularly for some heavy duty usage, like 4K video or a lot of continuous shooting. On the other hand, it isn’t clear, whether any Fujifilm camera actually does measure battery temperature in order to prevent the infamous battery swelling.

I’ll post updates in case I find anything new, so please subscribe (Facebook or RSS) in order to receive news. Until then, I can recommend the original NP-W126S in case you want to be really sure or some of the recommended brands from my battery test in order to save some money.

I have just finished testing of a new Patona Premium battery that works as a replacement for the Fujifilm NP-W126S. It performs very well, definitely exceeds the ordinary Patona and shares pretty much the same results as the best non-OEM battery tested so far — ExPro White. It’s a pleasure to see a battery that delivers the claimed capacity. Check out the full test results!

 

Lens need to be packed somehow when travelling in order to prevent their damage. One of the often used options is to carry them in a photo backpack, which usually includes some internal compartments with padding. This definitely is a convenient way of lens, camera and other gear storage, but for my personal needs it isn’t flexible enough. Sometimes I need just a day pack for photo gear,  rain gear and some food, another time a much larger backpack for multi-day adventures. Not to mention that photo backpacks are usually rather heavy and not particularly outdoor friendly. A notable exception are Mindshift backpacks, they look like very nice outdoor photo backpacks, but I’d still miss the flexibility of individual lens packing in a backpack of my choice.

The best what I have found for a reasonable lens protection and that can also carry an ultralight tag are Neoprene pouches. They are very light, a 3mm thick neoprene offers a limited, but in most cases adequate protection and there’s an easy access through a drawstring closed top. Each of the 4 available sizes also offers a belt loop and a hook. Since I don’t need these features, I got rid of them, which made the pouches somewhat cleaner and lighter (about 10g each).

For the small lens of mirrorless systems, like Fujifilm X, just the two smallest pouch sizes cover almost all of the available lenses. The small one (originally 33g) is great for primes, like Samyang/Rokinon 12mm or Fujinon XF 23mm and medium (originally 41g) can handle the rest, like Fujinon XF 10-24mm or even telephoto lenses like Fujinon XF 55-200mm.

In case there’s anybody afraid to have all the expensive lens stored only in a thin neoprene, there are also thicker 5mm versions available, like this Kanoni with an interior lining. I haven’t had any issue with the thinner version and not even the lining colors changed my mind to purchase the thicker one. 😉

The new article covers everything about Fujifilm batteries charging, portable power sources and methods for unlimited shooting. It finishes the trilogy of articles about NP-W126 battery alternatives and X-T2 power management. Have a look!