These days, almost everything we use for photography or video is battery powered, from cameras themselves to sliders, gimbals, monitors, lights, portable backup solutions and all other kinds of doohickies. One of the biggest names in batteries for photographers and filmmakers is Anton Bauer, but their batteries are shrinking, with the new Titon SL series offering larger capacities in smaller cases. We caught up with them at IBC 2019 to find out more.
The Omnicharge Ultimate is a beast of portable AC, DTAP and USB power
The Omnicharge Ultimate has a whopping capacity of 34,800mAh. This is a lot of juice. If you are looking for V-mount compatible, you’d be looking at about a 125Wh battery. But, I am jumping ahead of myself. Let’s start again.
The Omnicharge Ultimate is basically a power bank on steroids. It is similar to your 10,000mAh power bank that you carry everywhere because your phone battery gets nuked by midday. Only it is three and a half times as strong and features an AC outlet, a super-detailed LCD monitor, a variable DC output and a 3 USB ports.
How I prevented a Godox speedlight from setting my studio on fire
Yup, is a harsh title, clickbaity even. Sadly, it’s true. I do think that this story (and lesson) could have ended up very differently. Luckily, no one is hurt and no harm as done to my studio aside one dead battery.
I am a big Godox fan. I shoot quite a bit with the AD600, AD200 and the V860II for Sony. Well, mostly with the AD600 and AD200. The 860II is many times waiting in the drawer for when we need an extra light. Since it is rarely used, I don’t top off the battery. It usually stays in the drawer next to the strobe. I charge it before a shoot and sometimes after a shoot as well. Now, before I talk about exploding homes, let’s take a look at the tech that powers the V860II.
DJI Matrice 200 drones are crashing due to faulty batteries, DJI says
DJI has recently confirmed that some of the Matrice 200 drones are randomly falling out of the sky. The drones lose power mid-flight despite the indicator showing that there’s more battery life. And after investigating the issue, it turns out that the problem is in faulty batteries.
Portable power – Everything you ever needed to know about V-Mount batteries
At one point, V-Mount batteries weren’t very common outside of high-end production. These days, though, they’re starting to become much more prolific as the devices that utilise them are becoming more affordable. But V-Mount batteries can be pretty expensive, which puts a lot of newcomers off even considering them. But should you?
In this video, Caleb Pike goes over just about everything there is to know about V-Mount batteries. He talks about the devices he uses them with, the various adapters available, powering multiple devices from a single battery, and even touches on battery capacity limits for flights.
Everything you need to know about flying with Li-ion batteries and TSA restrictions
Since the Samsung Galaxy’s exploding battery issue, people have become concerned about flying with Lithium-Ion batteries. TSA has some restrictions when it comes to carrying them on a plane, and it can be confusing and frustrating if you need to travel for a photo shoot. In this video, Jay P. Morgan shares plenty of useful information that will help you prepare your batteries for a flight and arrive happily and safely to your shooting destination.
DIY Options for Charging Drone Batteries Off-Grid
If you have a drone, sooner or later you’re going to want to charge your drone battery off-grid.
The problem is that drones use big batteries, so to charge a big battery you need an even bigger battery – a simple solar panel USB charger might be good enough to charge your phone, but it isn’t going to provide enough current to charge a drone battery.
There are a few commercial options available that can charge your drone batteries without an AC outlet, but I decided to build my own…(spoiler – don’t bother!)
Review of the CORE SWX V-Mount batteries
In a previous article, I wrote about why I sometimes use V-mount batteries as they allow me to run multiple devices shooting 4K and sometimes even 4K RAW for an entire day on two or three batteries. I decided to go with two different models from CORESWX.
What are V-lock batteries and should you be using them?
As a video shooter, I have needs and one of the big ones is power. Shooting 4K video and RAW video requires a LOT of juice and very often I am powering more than just a camera. I could have microphones that are pulling power from the camera battery. I could also have external monitors, recorders and lights.
Build yourself a charging station to save time and get organised with your batteries
Charging batteries is a pain in the backside. I remember when I used to shoot events with four Nikon SB-900 speedlights with SD-9 packs attached to each of them. That was 96 AA batteries I had to charge up the night before every event. Boy am I glad that more and more lights are switching to Lithium Ion now. Fewer batteries, and more pops per charge.
But even today, I still have a lot of batteries and devices to charge. There’s a dozen Nikon EN-EL15, another dozen Nikon EN-EL14, three tablets, three phones, Godox PB960 packs, the Godox A1, several USB power banks, gimbal batteries, drone batteries and a bunch of other stuff I haven’t listed. The trick is to get organised, and in this video from the folks over at FStoppers, we see how they organise their charging.
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