A small 100watt car DC-AC adapter with a USB power output is great for charging your batteries on the go. Plus you can use it to power your laptop or other 120v things you have (under 100watts o'course).

I also like my Archos 605 portable media player with its large touch screen. It's good for watching movies on the go or showing off your favorite photo's.

(I know it's not obscure, but I really love my iPhone 3GS)

As for mains plug type adaptors, what I did after misplacing the expensive universal adaptor I bought some years ago, was to buy two mains european female plugs and wired them with two 10 inches pieces of wire. Then, when I got to the USA, I bought one male plug and wired both female plugs into it. Bingo ! Instant and very cheap adaptor. I did the same when I went to Japan.

jonnyapple said:
Yes, batteries for my flash (and for wii remotes and my new Zoom H4n recorder). I was just reading some of the reviews and people were saying they were having trouble with overheating and even melting in some cases. I haven't experienced anything like that, so maybe it's a recent quality control issue.

I had one and it broke, Now I just use a couple of Sanyo Eneloop Chargers and batteries

Pete

Yes, as in within the last week. This is getting embarrassing. Anyone else have a good gadget suggestion?

jonnyapple said:
I was just reading some of the reviews and people were saying they were having trouble with overheating and even melting in some cases. I haven't experienced anything like that, so maybe it's a recent quality control issue.

Uh-oh. Are those recent reviews?

Yes, batteries for my flash (and for wii remotes and my new Zoom H4n recorder). I was just reading some of the reviews and people were saying they were having trouble with overheating and even melting in some cases. I haven't experienced anything like that, so maybe it's a recent quality control issue.

That thing is awesome Jonny! You use it to charge batteries for your flash I'm guessing? I'm not sure how useful the number really are but it looks cool :^) Maybe I'll get one of those when I get a battery grip for my camera...

And the converter I have doesn't do anything to voltage. You need to check on the device itself to see it it's compatible with the different voltages—most are.

What kind of converter? Does it take 220V down to 110V? That would be useful.

They sell it at amazon.

edit: I read the first review at amazon. The guy has 'engineer' in his username. ;-)

Woah. Can you find a picture Jonny?

I don't think I use anything particularly obscure. Maybe the most obscure gadget I have is a European Outlet to American Outlet converter thingamajiggy. But that doesn't really count.

Now it looks like I'm the one not being helpful ;^)

So many of the posts here are about lenses and cameras (go figure). I thought I would put up a post to see if anyone has any photo-related gadgets it's unlikely people have heard of but might be useful to others here.

I got the idea as I stuck some batteries in to charge for a photo shoot tomorrow, so I'll start.

I love my battery charger and it's the kind of thing that most people don't review. The people who would are probably engineers (I'm not). It's a La Crosse Technology BC-9009/BC-900 (color is the only difference), and it's really a cool battery charger (you're probably wondering if I'm telling the truth about not being an engineer). I won't go into too much detail, but it will let you choose the charge current anywhere from a 200mA trickle up to 1A per battery on four batteries (or 1.8A on two batteries). It's got an LCD display that shows status info for each battery as it's charging: actual charge current, accumulated charge, voltage, and discharge current if you have it do a refresh.

Does anyone have any useful toys that the average NR forum user might not know about?