Do you not like dangling batteries? Do you hate the idea of getting a camera cage just to mount a bigger battery? It seems Hobolite feels the same as they made a solution for you. The Hobolite LiteDock ($169) is a USB-C battery grip with a built-in 3450mAh Li-ion battery. Oh, and it’s really stylish, too – definitely fancier than using standard power banks for your LED lights.
One ONsite Relay C can replace 8 batteries
You’ve been there. You are shooting a long-form video or running a full night timelapse, and boom! Your battery dies. It’s one of those sad things that comes with digital photography. The need for power. If you are shooting something where you cannot move your camera, swapping batteries can be a real project killer. This is where the ONsite Relay C (link) comes in. It provides an uninterrupted power supply to your camera via the battery chamber. (And that battery port thing matters. I’ll get to that later).
The ONsite Relay C is a battery coupler with some smarts to connect more than one battery to your camera. More than one battery means that even if one battery runs out, the other battery will keep pushing power to your camera, so the camera never feels the swap. From the camera’s perspective, it just has one huge power reservoir to drink from.
Blind Spot Gear announces the Power Junkie v2 with USB Power Delivery and charging abilities
Blind Spot Gear, the company behind 2018’s original Power Junkie, is back with an update. It’s the Power Junkie v2, and it’s just launched today through Kickstarter. If you’ve no idea what the Power Junkie is, it’s a battery plate that takes Sony NP-F style batteries and provides outputs with which you can power other gear, like cameras, monitors, field recorders, etc.
It negates the need to have multiple batteries for multiple devices. Now, you can power everything from a single battery. As well as the neatness of just having a single battery, it means you don’t have to monitor the battery life of multiple devices while you’re trying to record! The new Power Junkie v2 has been rebuilt from the ground up to power up to offer a whole host of new features over its predecessor.
New EU law forces Apple to switch to USB-C chargers for iPhones
“Does anyone have an iPhone charger?” a person asks in a panic. Others shrug their shoulders because they have a house full of chargers – but they’re all USB-C. This is no longer going to happen. Well, at least not in Europe.
The European Union has reached a landmark agreement that wants to unify various consumer electronics and make them feature a USB-C charging port. Yes, this includes the iPhone and AirPods, and it should happen by 2024.
Stop paying through the nose for OEM batteries – Your camera might support USB power banks
Do you ever get that feeling that you never have enough batteries for your camera(s)? I do, especially when I’m shooting video. OEM batteries for most mirrorless cameras can be insanely expensive, but many people shy away from third party batteries. But there is another, much less expensive power option available to many mirrorless camera shooters these days, and that’s USB Power Delivery.
I’ve spoken about USB-PD here on DIYP before. I use USB-PD cables that negotiate the voltages for me and let me feed it into a dummy battery inside my camera. But now, most new cameras are coming with USB-PD support natively built right into the camera. And we’re not just talking about charging up the battery here, either. No, you can actually power your camera from a USB-PD power bank (personally, I’m a fan of OnSite 100W PD battery)
Core SWX’s new Powerbase Edge Link can power your mirrorless camera for over 12 hours
Core SWX has updated its Powerbase lineup, initially launched in 2019, with two new batteries. There’s the PB Edge Link, a 70Wh V-mount battery that sports a 7.4v output port for your DSLR or mirrorless camera, as well as Type-A 5v and Type-C Power Delivery USB ports and two 14.8v d-tap ports. According to Core SWX, this battery is capable of powering a Sony A7 series camera for over 12 hours.
The other is the new PB Edge Lite, a 47Wh battery that is primarily designed to live underneath your camera and provides a little over 8 hours of use on a Sony A7 series camera. Like the PB Edge Link, there are two 14.8v d-tap sockets, a 7.4v port for your camera, but no USB-PD. Instead, you get a pair of Type-C USB sockets capable of delivering 5v. It’s very similar to the original PB Edge Base, but without V-mount connectivity.
This 27,000,000mAh “portable” power bank can charge your camera battery thousands of times
Power is always an issue for photographers and filmmakers when you’re away from plug sockets for extended periods of time. And I’m a big fan of portable power for my gear and to recharge stuff. But this one really takes the cake. It’s billed as “portable” power bank, but it doesn’t exactly fit in your pocket… Or even a camera bag. An entire camera bag. Without any camera gear in it. But this thing has huge a storage capacity to match its huge size.
It was built by Chinese tinkerer Handy Geng, who decided to go a little over the top after seeing that his friend’s USB power banks were bigger than his. So, he set about making his own DIY 27,000,000mAh power bank. Yes, you read that right, a 27 million mAh – or 27,000Ah or 27kAh – “portable” power bank. Potentially enough to charge a camera battery thousands of times over!
Run all your gear on location with this 1200 Watt DIY portable power station
Portable power for use on location is always a fascinating topic. Over the last few years we’ve seen more battery-powered portable strobes from companies like Godox and Profoto, USB power banks are ridiculously cheap, and we’ve even seen ones that can put out 120-240v AC. Some of us also have our own solutions for powering gear on location.
But have you thought about building your own portable power station you can take out on location to charge or power your kit? If so, this one from Matt at DIY Perks should interest you. It’s capable of supplying up to 1200W to charge or power pretty much anything you might want to throw at it. Even a microwave!
Powering a camera for a month-long 24/7 timelapse
Long term timelapses are a lot of fun to shoot, but they can come with a lot of challenges. What happens if your gear gets stolen or damaged? What if it simply moves and you lose your framing? Or stops shooting entirely? It’s a constant learning experience of challenges that we have to figure out as we face them.
But probably the biggest challenge is that of power. For Oklahoma farmer Derek Chisum, who wanted to shoot timelapse of his peanuts growing up out of the ground in his field, the solution is simple. Hook the camera – a GoPro in this case – up to a car battery. Derek spoke to DIYP about his setup.
Volta Version 2.0 turns their top-handle power bank into a whole camera power ecosystem
If you’ve been a visitor here for a while, you might remember Volta. They released the first version of their top-handle power bank in November 2019, but it wasn’t perfect. The idea was great. Pop a couple of batteries inside the handle, and it feeds power out to your camera. It was cool but basic, and it wasn’t quite perfect.
Well, now they’re back, with Volta 2.0, currently running on Indiegogo, which includes an evolved top handle and a system that seems to have had a complete redesign, making it much more versatile. It comes with a rather cool new charging “SnapCharger” station that doubles up as a V-Mount battery. It’s also stackable, letting you charge up to 8 batteries at once.
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