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I’ve been keeping an eye on portable power options for probably about a decade now. Most of my work is on location, I’m often away for several days at a time, and much of my equipment requires power or some kind or another.
Recently, I was asked if I wanted to check out the Novoo AC Power Bank. It looked an intriguing little unit so I agreed to have a look. While I waited for it to arrive I was expecting to be entirely underwhelmed, but it’s actually really impressed me.
If you’re like me, and you shoot mostly on location, power is an issue. For photography I solved those issues by switching to Godox strobes with light battery packs or integrated batteries. For video, though, power for continuous lights can be troublesome. Or at the very least, expensive. Some lights will allow you to use relatively inexpensive Sony NPF batteries, while others require expensive V-Mount batteries.
I’ve found another solution to my continuous power problem, though. RC lipo batteries. I had a few left over from my DJI Flamewheel F550 drone after the controller was stolen. So, I figured why not put them to good use elsewhere? They’re also great for powering cameras for battery-draining long exposure timelapse sequences, too.
The more features that get packed into each new generation of cameras, the less time batteries seem to last. Things like liveview, gps, WiFi, NFC, VR/IS, and a host of other doohickies just drain them faster than they used to. Even if your camera doesn’t feature superfluous battery draining features, other things can kill them quickly, too. Shooting video or timelapse with long exposures, for example.
The obvious choice is simple. Take a bunch of spare batteries. But what if you want more time without having to worry about interrupting your sequence to swap out a battery? That’s where USB power comes in. This video from David at 30Five Millimeter shows you how you can get USB power with your DSLR or mirrorless camera with just a dummy battery and a $5 cable.
Now this is an idea I think we can all get behind. Anything that keeps us charged faster and for longer while out shooting can’t be bad. So, imagine being able to go out and shoot as much as you want for as long as you want without having to worry about your battery life at all. And if it does run out, you can recharge it in just a few seconds.
Such batteries are the vision of scientists at the Univercity of Central Florida, using supercapacitors. Supercapacitors store more energy and can be recharged more than 30,000 times without degrading. Using phones a a comparison, most phone batteries tend to last only around 1,500 charges before severe degradation kicks in. This is why your 3 year old iPhone barely lasts til lunch despite charging overnight.
Nikon stole the action camera spotlight at CES 2016, but a company called ACTIVEON is looking to make a mark of their own with the Solar X, an action cam that can use solar panels to keep the battery running an extra four hours.
We always talk about powering cameras (and gear in general) as a big thing. I got to fly an Inspire 1 for an upcoming tutorial and was shocked at how much of our production hustle had to do with managing batteries. I am quite confident that battery and power management will be the next step in camera evolution.
Some companies are making bigger batteries (or adapters for bigger batteries), some companies solve the issue by making almost instantly-charging batteries, but this solution tops them all as it creates real of-the-air charging just by transiting a specific WiFi signal.
The system is called power over wifi and it literally creates a battery-free camera. At least in the sense that we perceive battery.
Over the years, I accumulated a bit of an assortment of batteries. It feels like far-far away from the times where a case of AA’s would do the trick for everything and anything.
I am now a proud owner of several chargers, battery types and lots and lots of cables. Until lately they were occupying my desk and taking away both space and mental powers (oh! you know what I mean). It has come to the point where something had to be done. And I don’t even have that many batteries…. I wanted a solution that does not clutter my desk, be easy to manage, I wanted to tell full batteries from empty ones, and I wanted the option to take chargers away if I need them out of the office. I Ended up with the Wall Of Power. This is how I did it.
Batteries are a drag. They are loaded or unloaded, dead or alive and generally just always find their way out of their boxes and into to your bags floor, where they sit quietly and rot and destroy the bag…
Our usual recommendation is to use rechargeable batteries as default, but I always carry an extra set of Alkaline batteries as spare as well.
Engineer Lee Hite tested the theory that a dead Alkaline battery will bounces while a good battery will stay. Hite tested a few alternative explanations, including a test to see if the bounce is coming from released gas.
One of the drawbacks of using the camera in-microphone port is that it only supports 3.5mm and while there are some decent solution for that (see the Rode video mic pro), if you really want nice audio, the higher end shotgun microphones require something called Phantom Power – this is a way to provide the microphone with electricity via the same XLR cable that connects it to the recorder (in our case – the camera).
Mike Kobal shares a clever hack for getting Phantom powered XLR shot gun mics on a DSLR. (seems like everyone is hacking their DSLRs nowadays – this really compliments the power hack we featured last week)
The solution is to use the IK Multimedia iRig Pre Microphone Interface which is originally a Mic to iOS Device, but works wonders on the GH4 video monster and other DSLR.
The irig Pre goes via an iPhone to standard plug converter and plugs into the microphone jack and the head phone jack. And both the shotgun mic and the earphones goes into the iRig Pre.
Mike suggests to get a few connectors as they are very flimsy.
If you were not satisfied with the 9 hours battery solution we shared last week, Caleb Pike shares an even better solution that not only lasts more than a day of shooting HD on a DSLR, but it can also power a monitor for that day.
The solution is build around a (bit shaky) NP-F970 Battery Adapter which is compatible with Canon in via a similar adapter to the one we showed last week.
Now Caleb is pretty upfront about the build quality of the unit which apparently is not that awesome, but on the flip side of it, it is very budget friendly.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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