AC130: A couple of AC130 issues

[pronghornproductions]

I searched the forum but can't seem to find what I am looking for, I have an aftermarket el cheapo battery as one of the spares for my AC130, the brand is Maximal power and it is a 5800 mha model. Anyways, I have used this battery for almost 2.5 years w/o incident (other than shorter than advertised charge life) until the other day when I got a " Battery cannot be used" display on my camera. I was in a crunch and so i used another battery that was at about 20% charge until it died, I then tried the el cheapo battery again and it worked until my shoot was done....... The same thing happened the other day however this time the battery would not work at all, so i assume it has reached it's lifespan and it is time for a new one, but my question is : could use of this battery hurt my camera in any way? If so I would rather pay the extra money for a genuine Panny battery or a GOOD aftermarket so what are some inexpensive recommendations? Also I have been using a Varizoom rock controller, having had to replace the cable connection once already and in less than a year the same one is bad (no focus, or zoom control) I am curious if there is a good alternate controller that uses straight connectors instead of the 90 degree ones used by varizoom....... Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Greg Smith]

I have an Ikan brand aftermarket battery that always works in my HMC80 but gives the "Battery cannot be used" message about half the time on my AF100. (This is the same VW-VBG6 type battery used in the AC130 and AC160.) So far, cycling the camera power switch, sometimes two or three times, has always worked and the camera will eventually recognize it. My hunch is that this is an issue with the digital communications between the battery and the camera that allows for the precise display of time remaining in the viewfinder -- not a matter of the actual power supplied. But this has led me to be shy about aftermarket batteries in general in this form factor, so I stick with the genuine Panasonics for any important work.

That said, I've had really good results with Swit batteries for my other two cameras (PX270 and DVX200) that use the new VW-VDB58 style, and I actually think these are better designed and built than the Panasonic OEM batteries. But I haven't tried Swit's VBG6 substitute.

- Greg

 

[Michael Carter]

I have a 130, a couple of the small panny batteries and a pile of Maximal (from Amazon) larger batteries. Zero issues for years now with the cheapies. Never once got an error message and they still hold a 2+ hour charge. (I use the small batteries with my Marshall monitor, they have plates available for the Panasonics and the small cube batteries make more sense on the monitor).

One of the little panny batteries has broken at the glue seam, just trashed it - only battery problem I've had in fact.