How to Know When It’s Time to Replace Your Nikon Zf Battery

What I’m talking about here isn’t the regular indicator that tells you if the battery needs charging. That’s different.

Modern lithium batteries like these are far better than the old NiCad or similar batteries, and they don’t have the same kinds of memory effect problems. However, they do still degrade over time.

What I’m focusing on here is whether the battery needs to be completely replaced. That is, it’s a health check rather than a charge check.

Like many newer cameras, the Nikon Zf uses batteries that enable the possibility to check on their own health and performance.

It’s not something you can tell just by looking at the battery. One day, they might come with their own built-in indicator, but for now, we’re relying on external devices to run the check and report back. And the Nikon Zf has one of those built-in.

You can find it under:

SETUP MENU (wrench/spanner icon) > Battery Info

The screen under that is entirely informational; it’s not one you can choose settings or interact with. But it tells you two things.

Battery charge status

It tells you how much the battery is currently charged. As a percentage, it’s much more granular than the simple bar indicator on the camera’s shooting display screens.

The “No. of shots” indicator isn’t showing what I expected. I would expect that to show the number of shots you could expect to get on the remaining charge. A bit like Nikon cameras show the number of shots you can expect to fit on remaining memory card space. Or how much mileage you can expect to get on the amount of gas in the tank in a car. But that’s not what it’s showing. Instead, Nikon says it “shows the number of times the shutter has been released.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s a shutter actuation count — at least, not a total number of shutter actuations of the camera. Instead, it’s the number of shots that have been taken on that battery since the battery was last charged. How that’s useful in any practical sense isn’t entirely clear to me, but it is what it is.

Battery age (battery health check)

The bottom section is where I’m focusing attention here. That’s the battery health check section.

It’s a 5-point scale from 0 to 4.

0 means it’s functionally a new battery, and it is performing as a new battery would. So, no degradation.

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4 means the battery has reached the end of its working life and won’t charge effectively. So it’s time to replace it with a new battery.

Batteries for the Nikon Zf

The Nikon Zf takes Nikon EN-EL15C batteries.

There are a couple of important things to note about this model.

1. First is the “C”. Nikon has gone through several generations of EN-EL15 batteries. They’re all the same size and will physically fit in the Zf’s battery compartment. And you can use EN‑EL15a and EN‑EL15b batteries in the Zf.

   But the performance won’t be as good. Specifically, you probably won’t get as many photos out of a single charge.

   If you already have those older models on hand, you can go ahead and use them. But if you’re buying new ones, I’d recommend sticking with the “C” version.

2. Second is to stick with Nikon-branded batteries. Under normal circumstances, I’m very much in favor of good aftermarket batteries from third-party manufacturers. The better models often perform just as well and are typically much cheaper.
   
   But in this case, I’ve yet to come across an aftermarket battery that works in this camera. The SmallRig EN-EL15c batteries I like for my Nikon Z8 won’t work in the Zf. That might change as newer models come out, but for now, my recommendation is to stick with authentic Nikon batteries as the safe option.