Batteries, a boring but necessary subject, a little like talking about air or water really, you need it, but resent that need at the same time.
Image from an iPhone, because well, nothing else had batteries.
This is what it takes to keep the machine running.
Top left are the NP batts, mostly Neewer. The 970’s are genuinely useful, giving me a solid hour with the Amaran 60D, two with the big Neewer LED’s, even longer with the smaller ones and if I use a monitor, I can leave them on for a decent period.
The little 550’s are another story. Useless really for anything heavy duty (10 mins on the 60D), they are reserved for short monitor runs while shooting for weight or little LED’s, but I always need to take a few, making their smaller size redundant.
I bought the better Smallrig NP adapter, that allows 5, 12 and 7.5v outputs and is less cumbersome than the INIU power packs below.
Next we come to the Eneloop Pro AA and AAA’s. Excellent, just excellent. These made flash use a pleasure, usually giving me a full night to a set, maybe a change later in a big evening as well as keeping the bulk of my Zoom gear at the ready.
Another advantage of these is their long sitting time. I can keep one in my MKE-600 case and know it will give me hours of power, months after being charged. I could not be bothered tracking them all down, forgetting where they are all hiding, but I bought 30, or was it 32?
They cost me (30-32x AA, 12x AAA, not all pictured), about $200au, but they have saved me that already and I have only just tapped into their expected life span. I think I worked out at the time they cost about 2c per use*, much cheaper than less reliable throw-aways.
Top right are the Old batts for the Pen, EM10 and newer EM5’s. These see too little use and I will likely have batts well after I have cameras. They last well and charge decently quickly.
Below them are the work horse batts for the EM5 Mk1’s and Pen F. Some of these are over 12 years old, but they still go. My biggest issue like above, is camera bodies to put them in. The Pen F is really it and I use it too little. Lack of use makes the batts lazy, but lack of need for the cameras they run makes that too real.
The two INIU power packs have given me new confidence with sound and rig gear**. I can charge most things from them, including my newer cameras. With one rig mounted I can use a mic, monitor and interface without fear or pack a large sound rig knowing if the AA’s are a little tired, I can simply go around them. I ran the H8 with several mics in a test recently and after an hour of use, 1 of the “pads” had gone out, meaning I still had at least 80% of the larger pack.
The little generic phone pack (upper left of the INIU’s), connects magnetically to the troublesome Zoom F1, fixing the power/battery door issues I had with that unit in one move. I have used it for a dozen jobs and it shows full bars (dots).
Powering this unit has been difficult. Even the Eneloop bats only show reduced power reading from fresh, leaving you wondering when they will fail, so to be safe, I always changed them each job. This was problematic because the battery door broke, as they often do, leaving me a fiddly and frustrating cable tie remedy. The magnetically attached power bank is elegant and efficient.
The GODOX batt is for the 860, which is the difference between that and the cheaper 685. The 685 with Eneloops is very good, but at the time I felt I needed a flash that could handle high speed sync (using a burst of flash) multiple times in a row. Often the stand out at big jobs, it can go and go and go with constant high demand placed on it. I mean to get another batt, but to be honest I may never use it and the 685 is more than adequate as a reserve.
Next we come to the 9 (!) EM1 batteries. 2 with each for the EM1x’s, 1 each for the EM1.2’s and a spare for the grip. Probably capable of 12-15,000 images without charging, I can safely handle most jobs, even month long field trips, but you cannot have too much power. An added bonus is, if I use the 8 (!!!) chargers I have, I can have all but 1 up and going from flat in one hour and the green indicator lights are bright enough to read by. I can also load the three EM1x battery sliders, for near instant change-over.
Lower left are the G9.1 batts. These are good, solid batts, but charge slowly. They are a pair of originals and a pair of Better Batt copies and I cannot see any difference in performance, but the after markets were 20% of the price. I can get about an hour of 10bit/1080/50p recording, but annoyingly the cameras only do half an hour at a time.
Above them are the S5/G9.2 batts, again a mix of original and after market. These are better batteries overall (and/or the cameras drain less) and share some compatibility with the ones above (I think they fit old cams, but not the other way), but I have enough not to care.
If away from power for any length of time, my endurance is quite high.
The INIU’s and an older bank, the little phone one and my RB9 Weelite (which can charge) supply about 60,000mah which can power a phone, OSMO, little LED’s, laptop, camera or Zoom interfaces, I have enough AA’s to fire about 4000 full power flash fires, AAA’s for various other bits, can run an EM1 for over 10,000 frames, a G9.2 for 5-6 hrs of video, a G9.1 for 3-4 more hrs or 3-4000 stills, my various lights could give me 4-8hrs of one of them at a stretch, the Pen F and an EM10 could add another 5-8,000 stills.
Not a massively interesting subject, but usually the first practical consideration of a working pro. I am happy that now I can record up to an hour continuously with three matching video cams, one for a lot longer if I have a decent card, sound for even longer and with backups. Importantly I have no nagging fear of batteries being my betrayer.
It struck me when writing this, I have never tossed out a rechargeable battery from any of my current gear, some of which dates back to the release of the original EM5 or Pen’s. Batteries it seems need not be the reason we cannot function, long or short term.
*The math is something like 500 full uses per battery at 2700mah each.
**The newer cams can charge from the packs, some even run from them, so I can technically run continuous recording of sound and video from a pack, but the single C-type is also used for SSD drive connection, so I am limited by either battery or recording medium. Only an off board recorder could address this.