UK based photo site « NorthLight Images » has recently discovered a patent application from Canon (popular photocopier manufacturer) that will make many people, like me, who use battery grips on their cameras, very interested/jealous…
This shows a « Universal » battery grip that attaches to different camera bodies with a changeable adapter. Makes you wonder why no-one has ever come up with something like this before – although, Nikon tend to treat there battery grips as a cash cow and price them far too high. It is, after all, only a box with minimal electronics Inside.
Anyway, if this ever sees the light of day, Canon users will really be a step, a leap ahead of other camera users.
Battery grips are not only for holding batteries (with the exception of the MB-N10 for the Z 6 & 7) they also allow you to have extra controls, or rather, duplicate controls to allow a more comfortable grip on the camera when you use it in a vertical position, for example.
To enable the correct connection between these controls and the camera electronics, a series of contacts are available on the camera baseplate, which marry up to similar contacts on the battery grip.
Up until now, each camera series has had these contacts in different positions on the baseplate, allowing Nikon (and Canon) to sell expensive battery grips for each new model. It seems perfectly logical to build a « reasonable » sized battery grip, and then equip it with changeable plates for different camera bodies.
So, a little like the light bulbs that never burn out, will we ever actually see this produced?