Battery grips are a luxury. You don’t need one to take great photos but when you have one you wonder how you ever shot with out it. I’ve been lucky enough to receive the new Aputure BP-E9 Battery Grip for the 60D. This is their latest grip and I’m on of the first to road test it, all very exciting isn’t it.
As I mentioned above, you don’t need a battery grip it’s a luxury. I haven’t had one before, I have used one a couple of times but not as an add on accessory. I’m talking about the inbuilt one on the Canon 1D range. The grip arrived just in time for a weekend full of shooting. Most of you would know that weekend for a photographer are usually pretty hectic with model portfolio shoots and things like that. The weekend just past saw me run an all day workshop on Saturday and two back to back model portfolio shoots on Sunday. So I got to give the battery grip a good workout.
I just want to mention again, that I’m road testing the brand new BP-E9 battery grip from Aputure for the 60D. Aputure do have a battery grip for what looks to be like most Canon and Nikon cameras but I haven’t tested them and I’m not sure if anything has been changed in other devices.
So what does a battery grip do? Well essentially it allows you to shoot vertically in portrait mode, for a lot longer in a more comfortable position. Secondly it increase battery life by allowing you to have two batteries in your camera at once.
I want to talk about the bad first. It’s not really a bad, but more of an observation. The Shutter Speed cog wheel on the grip feels much cheeper and nothing like the shutter speed cog wheel on the Canon body. However about 10 minutes into using it for the first time I had forgotten all about it and up until now I hadn’t given it another thought.
On to the good. All other buttons feel fine. Half clicking on the shutter release works well. Something that I had never thought about was where the 60D’s battery door was going to go. I new I needed to take it off but I just never thought about where I was going to store it. Luckily enough Aputure have thought of this and created a little holder that you slide the door into. That was it is securely attached to the prat of the grip that goes inside the camera body, it can’t fall out and you always have it with you if you want to take the grip off.
I like the fact that I can have two batteries in their at the same time however probably the best feature is the additional holder that allows you to run your camera off AA’s. It’s more of a peace of mind thing but I know that if worse comes to worse I can power the camera using one of the many spares sets of AA’s that I keep in my bag to power my strobes.
I found that having the battery grip attached actually made shooting in landscape more balanced. I was using the Sigma 50mm f1.4 EG EX HSM which if any of you know is quite a sizeable 50mm lens. I thought it wouldn’t work that well with my strap but again I was proven wrong. Everything just worked how it was meant to if not better.
The Aputure BP-E9 Battery Grip has become a permanent fixture on my camera body. I can shoot with out it but I’m so happy with the performance and quality that I can’t see any reason why I would take it off. If your looking for a battery grip that doesn’t come with the larger price tags of the Canon and Nikon grips then check out the range of Aputure Grips, at least you know you can get in contact with the company unlike many of these third party devices you buy off ebay. Check it out!
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