Buy an Extra Battery or Battery Grip?

For me this is a no-brainer, get the spare battery, and if your budget allows get the battery grip later.

A battery grip with two batteries will last longer than a single battery (especially if you run the live view mode or video). If you want a left handed camera, the battery grip is the way to go (upside down, live view mode).

At least on Canon cameras, the battery grip has another shutter release button, so when you are taking pictures in the other orientation, you can comfortably hold it and snap pictures.

Look at the Zeikos battery grips. Appear to be a pretty high quality knock off of the OEM grips, get great reviews on Amazon.

I've asked Santa to get me one for may Canon this year.

Another benefit of the grip is if you have medium to large hands, you will feel much more confortable holding your camera.

As previously said, Canon camera grips have the extra buttons which are very handy to make changes while in portrait orientation...I'm sure Nikon grips have them too.

And yet another advantage of the battery grip is that you get faster frames per second with most cameras too! You would have to dig the net to find out exactly how much faster your camera gets and this is dependant on the transfer speed of your card also...

Speaking from personal experience: holding your camera with a heavy lens attached in the portrait orientation without a vertical grip for an extended period of time can be quite painful.

I had a grip on my smaller body Canon XSi and liked it, but just went with an extra battery for the 7D that replaced it. It's lighter and fits my bags better. I tend to shoot off tripods most of the time and that negates the convince of the vertical controls. I can pull 500 RAW shots off one battery.

Dale

If its between another battery and a grip to be used with one battery, I say an extra battery. My cameras are gripped most of the time, but i have several batteries for each camera! I dont see how a grip and one battery will help the OP get more photos in a day!

However, if the OP opens up his or her checkbook, then an extra battery and grip definitely fit the bill.

Don't know about Nikon, but some of the Canon battery grips allow the use of AA batteries, which can help in an emergency (such as forgetting to charge). I had a grip for my Canon but ended up trading it in on an extra lens. I went the extra battery route. If you are only shooting photos, battery life is very good on most DSLRs.

100Teraflops said:

If its between another battery and a grip to be used with one battery, I say an extra battery. My cameras are gripped most of the time, but i have several batteries for each camera! I dont see how a grip and one battery will help the OP get more photos in a day!

However, if the OP opens up his or her checkbook, then an extra battery and grip definitely fit the bill.

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I thought all battery grips held two batteries?! Sorry, I get what you're saying now...

Go for the extra battery . Charge it up , place it in a plastic bag and stick it in your pocket . When I got my 5D I sprung for a grip , thinking it would be nice to have the option of using AA batteries if I was off the grid for a while . Pulled the grip off after a couple of months as I found the real or imagined advantages outweighed the fact that IMO it made a nice handling camera into a lump that took pictures . Wouldn't get one again unless I knew for sure I'd be away from a charger for some time ( like over a week), or if I knew for sure I'd be taking a LOT of portraits.

ijohn.8.80 said:

And yet another advantage of the battery grip is that you get faster frames per second with most cameras too! You would have to dig the net to find out exactly how much faster your camera gets and this is dependant on the transfer speed of your card also...

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That's only in the olden days of film, when there used to be powered motors in the grip to help with the film advance which sped up the burst rate.
Electronic battery grips have no speed benefit.

I'd get the grip, though, as it makes that cramped up D5000 so much more comfortable to hold.

A 3rd party grip and battery combo is even better; at $40 you get the best of both worlds.

Prodo123 said:

Electronic battery grips have no speed benefit

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Sorry, but it does make a difference of an extra half a frame per second on my camera!

ijohn.8.80 said:

Sorry, but it does make a difference of an extra half a frame per second on my camera!

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You are either buying into a placebo or using rapid discharge AA batteries, neither of which are good things.

Prodo123 said:

You are either buying into a placebo or using rapid discharge AA batteries, neither of which are good things.

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Sorry, none of the above. I go from a scorching 3.5 fps to 4.1 fps continuous! It's a Canon 1100D and my SD card transfers at 95mb/s.

ijohn.8.80 said:

Sorry, none of the above. I go from a scorching 3.5 fps to 4.1 fps continuous! It's a Canon 1100D and my SD card transfers at 95mb/s.

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That's a sign that the grip is consistently letting uncontrolled amounts of electricity into your camera and possibly harming its internals. It should not be doing that.
Which brand are you using? I'd return it if I were you...

Prodo123 said:

That's a sign that the grip is consistently letting uncontrolled amounts of electricity into your camera and possibly harming its internals. It should not be doing that.
Which brand are you using? I'd return it if I were you...

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It's a Phottix BG 1100D 2x LP-E10 grip. I've only tested it twice (when I first got it) for speed of Jpeg's and RAW. It freezes after about 4 or 5 RAW shots and then takes another 2, then freezes, and repeats... Jpeg's it keeps on going taking shots. Never actually used it for continuous frames myself. I've only ever been out on a bird shoot once and with only the stock 55-250mm lens, it's not quick enough to focus on a moving bird unless they are huge and slow!

Thanks for the heads-up in regard of excess charge being transmitted.

ijohn.8.80 said:

It's a Phottix BG 1100D 2x LP-E10 grip. I've only tested it twice (when I first got it) for speed of Jpeg's and RAW. It freezes after about 4 or 5 RAW shots and then takes another 2, then freezes, and repeats... Jpeg's it keeps on going taking shots. Never actually used it for continuous frames myself. I've only ever been out on a bird shoot once and with only the stock 55-250mm lens, it's not quick enough to focus on a moving bird unless they are huge and slow!

Thanks for the heads-up in regard of excess charge being transmitted.

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Also a heads-up: The 1100D was meant to not have a battery grip and any grip made for it is unfortunately a bootlegged version.
I hear the Bowers have much better quality; you might have more luck with those.

The grip for my XSi is a Zeikos and it's well made. I don't know about the Nikon implementation of grips, but Canons is lacking in my opinion. You have to remove the battery door on the camera to install it. I looked at Pentax when I decided to spring for a dslr and they had a good grip setup. It just screwed onto the bottom of the camera and linked into the electrical system through a contact plate. Nothing to mess with if you wanted to pull it off.

Dale

MBP13 said:

Would you recommend that I buy another chargeable battery for my Nikon D5000 or buy a battery grip? If all goes well, I'm planing on doing something over the Chrisfmas holidays that would require me to take well over 1,000 pictures in one day. If I get another battery, I could have one charging and use one, etc. What are some benefits of using a battery grip?

What do you think? Thanks for your help!

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I'm not sure how many pictures you will get on a battery charge, but you may want to consider having enough batteries for your expected shooting plus one spare battery.

Batteries do go bad. Also, are you sure you will always be able to charge a battery during the day while you're shooting?

Also, you might want to consider a second charger so you can toss 2 batteries in at night and have them both ready in the morning.

If you do decide to go with a grip, you probably want to have 2 sets of batteries for it.

The spare charger mentioned is a good idea no matter what. I have a car charger/wall charger that's in my bag most of the time.

Dale

Prodo123 said:

That's only in the olden days of film, when there used to be powered motors in the grip to help with the film advance which sped up the burst rate.
Electronic battery grips have no speed benefit.

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http://en.nikon.ca/Nikon-Products/Product/Digital-SLR-Cameras/25444/D700.html

Continuous shooting up to 5 frames per second: Shoot at up to 8 frames per second with the optional MB-D10 Multi-power Battery Pack.

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paolo- said:

http://en.nikon.ca/Nikon-Products/Product/Digital-SLR-Cameras/25444/D700.html

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Prodo123 said:

That's a sign that the grip is consistently letting uncontrolled amounts of electricity into your camera and possibly harming its internals.

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The speed benefit only comes from using AAs with the MB-D10. This means the camera has no control over how much electricity is being drawn, and the burst rate dramatically drops as the batteries lose charge.
If you want any consistency, then you'll have to use the EN-EL3E battery which should not increase the burst rate as much; most users report 5-6 FPS with the EN-EL3E, while 7-8 with fully charged AAs.

With AAs, yes the current is uncontrollable but the camera in this case can handle it.

Prodo123 said:

The speed benefit only comes from using AAs with the MB-D10. This means the camera has no control over how much electricity is being drawn, and the burst rate dramatically drops as the batteries lose charge.
If you want any consistency, then you'll have to use the EN-EL3E battery which should not increase the burst rate as much; most users report 5-6 FPS with the EN-EL3E, while 7-8 with fully charged AAs.

With AAs, yes the current is uncontrollable but the camera in this case can handle it.

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Again, directly from Nikon,

EN-EL4a/EN-EL4 and AA batteries support higher frame advance rates (8 Frames per second in the D700 & D300) than the EN-EL3e.

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I don't really want to get in this argument but the bottom line is that for certain cameras you can safely get an fps boost and that might be something the OP should look into if he's considering getting a battery grip or just a second battery. I'm sure that there are lots of d700 users that have an EN-EL3E for their battery grip and keep a set of AA around when they need the max fps if they don't want to pony up for the EN-EL4a. I'm not sure if any of this applied to the d5000 though, just a dumb Canon user here.

Not one, but two people beat me to the "two chargers" option.

I've had excellent luck (not a single failure) with Wasabi chargers, as second chargers.

One thing that's really good about them is that they come with a 12V cigarette lighter (I suppose these days it's "power point") connection. This gives you another way to charge.

Also, for use on AC they don't need a power cord (the prongs flip out). This makes them a lot easier to pack.