Just learnt a very expensive lesson and thought I would share in the hope that one of you beautiful people will avoid such a costly mistake.
Being a wedding photographer I tend to push my flash hard and as such I was going through batteries at quite a rate. Looking around it turned out it was much cheaper to buy Duracells in bulk off eBay rather than in a shop, in fact it was nearly one third the price at 50p a unit rather than £1.50. In total I purchased about a 100 batteries and all seemed to be going fine until the day I came to use my SB-900 and it wouldn't power on.
Disaster.
Turns out despite looking legit the batteries were fakes and had leaked inside my flash. I posted the flash back to Nikon who informed me that the unit was severely damaged inside from the battery acid and it was beyond repair. Also, as a final insult, my camera insurance classed it as 'contamination' and wouldn't cover it.
The moral of the story is avoid bulk batteries, pay a bit more and buy them in the shop. Trust me when I say it is cheaper in the long run. There is an excellent guide on how to spot fakes here.
If you are wondering what to use as an alternative I can heartily recommend 'eneloop XX ' rechargeables. They maintain a steady power output and seem to last much better than the high end Duracell and energizer batteries.
Hope this helps, if you have any similar experiences please leave a comment below.
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