Energizer Lithium batteries ad

[Undertoad]

Just saw a Tee Vee ad for Energizer lithium batteries. It was of a world cup pitch, pull out to see the whole stadium, with thousands of camera flashes going off, as you often see. Of course, using a flash to shoot a stadium event is dumb, because the flash only illuminates about the first 20 feet or so. Use it to get a picture of your row; turn if off to shoot the field.

But back to the ad. Slowly the number of flashes decreases, until there's only one in the whole stadium left flashing. And with each flash, they boil down to a sound effect: click-whirrr. click-whirrr. click-whirrr.

The voiceover suggests that if you equip your digital camera with Energizer's lithium batteries, you'll get longer life out of them.

In your digital camera. Except that the digital camera doesn't make the sound of a "click-whirrr". That's the sound of a motor-driven film camera: the click of the shutter, and the whirrr of a motor winding the film to the next position.

They have to leave that sound effect in, because if they don't, it is assumed that you don't understand that the "flash" they funnel down to is a camera. They assume you are stupid.

Here's the real deal. If you have a digital camera that uses AA batteries, go to www.thomas-distributing.com, buy a Maha 204F charger with a set of at least four NiMH batteries. You'll pay a bit more up front, to buy the charger, but you'll get hundreds of uses out of one set of batteries.

They also have a bunch of replacement NiMH batteries for other sizes of battery, so check that out if you need. Once you have 'em, you'll use 'em in everything electronic.