Along with the short battery life of the DC600, I found I wasn't too happy with the battery life in the SL960 flash. All that extra space in the battery compartment begged for use so I figured why not add more batteries. Since the battery compartment is waterproof I didn't want to risk damaging it and came up with this hack.
I picked up a couple of battery holders from a local electronics shop that fit nicely into the spare space. I then tinned the leads and carefully wedged them into the existing case battery tabs such that they were in parallel with the standard batteries.
My first inclination was to add some 'filler' to keep everything snug when I closed the battery compartment. Mistake. On my second fresh water dive with the flash I flooded it. While drying everything out I realized that with the second set of batteries there was no chance of the any of the batteries getting loose, so I layered the second set in and left them as is, slightly loose with no filler between the batteries and the flash back. Success.
The cycle time of the flash stayed at the 2-3 second mark through out most of three cold water dives with the unit and easily outlasted the DC600 through a few of its battery changes.
I picked up a couple of battery holders from a local electronics shop that fit nicely into the spare space. I then tinned the leads and carefully wedged them into the existing case battery tabs such that they were in parallel with the standard batteries.
My first inclination was to add some 'filler' to keep everything snug when I closed the battery compartment. Mistake. On my second fresh water dive with the flash I flooded it. While drying everything out I realized that with the second set of batteries there was no chance of the any of the batteries getting loose, so I layered the second set in and left them as is, slightly loose with no filler between the batteries and the flash back. Success.
The cycle time of the flash stayed at the 2-3 second mark through out most of three cold water dives with the unit and easily outlasted the DC600 through a few of its battery changes.
