Red charger and 12v wilderness power

[Anson Fogel]

Has anyone used a 12v sealed lead acid (or similar portable) battery - car/motorcycle battery basically - to charge red batteries in the field using the car adapter?

I'm often well away from a car or power, in the hills, and was planning to chop the cigarette plug off the red charger vehicle adapter and put on some clips that I can connect to a sealed gel lead acid motorcycle battery for use on remote shoots. I use the same power for timelapse gear, charging laptop, etc

Thoughts, experiences?

[Anson Fogel]

Apparently, not a popular way to use this camera. Or, I write really terrible post openers. How about this:

For run and gun or wildlife/non hardlined EFP shooters doing remote work (Gibby? Tom? Meryem?) what do you do for power? Lots of batteries, sure, but what else? Car charging? Channeling lightning?

[Andrew J.]

Hi,

I can recommend,

1) Marine deep cycle battery with a charge controller, inverter and power source (alternator or photovoltaic). This method would be the best for a "power base camp"

2) Honda Portable Generator (not in National Forest areas).

3) Lots of 190w Li-Ion Batteries. This is the method I use.

Make sure to always use heavy duty deep cycle marine batteries over standard lead acid batteries.

[Anson Fogel]

Thanks

[Sam Crutsinger]

I just had a roadside shoot where I used a car battery, jumper cables, a 400w inverter, and the Red Charger. It worked great. You'd get the same results from a deep cycle marine battery.

The charger draws 220W, so a 250W inverter or better would cover you with a little head room. Here's what my setup looked like: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26515

[conrad gaunt]

I have four "leisure" batteries in the boot of my car, wired in parallel. Basically the same as marine batteries. Car batteries hold nothing like as much charge, and are only marginally cheaper.

You can get a split charger wired into your alternator to charge such arrays, and add solar panels to suit. This makes a good power base as someone else said.

If using an invertor, try and get one that outputs just enough power, as it'll be more efficient, and go for a "pure sine wave" invertor, which are more expensive, but softer on electronic devices, and alternators.. I have a Duratec 100w invertor for running laptops £80, rather than a "square wave" invertor 300w for £30. It has a nice metal body too. Remember invertors can kill you just like a mains plug..

That said, try to run as many devices as possible without an invertor ie buy a laptop 12v adapter, as invertors aren't that efficient, and it'll make your batteries last.

Also, I'd recommend NOT running devices from your cigarette lighter in your car, the socket will handle the wattage, but the wiring in many (UK) cars certainly won't handle sustained use, and the wires can burn out, pretty easily IME. Fixing can be expensive. Phones, yes, Red battery chargers, No IMHO

Either way, carrying some spare car fuses helps, till the wires burn through and the garage bill hits you..Like I said, get a split charger wired directly to your alternator, its cheaper in the long run. When your car battery is FULL, the alternator starts charging the array. They're cheap to buy, and install..

Also, you don't need as much "head room" as you think with invertors. Many devices draw 10x their usual power rating during startup, but this is already accounted for in most, if not all, invertors, so a 200W invertor will be able to handle a 2000W draw while the device initialises.