GH2 Battery life

Brandon Rice

Brandon Rice

Distributed Producer
I have a wedding gig this coming weekend and it will be my first shooting with the GH2. I plan to shoot stock firmware, 24H. I will be on Lumix lenses the majority of the time (I have the 14-140 and 20mm) and have my LCD for 75% of the time as well. My concern is battery life as I currently have 2 OEM batteries and 3 third party. I plan to use the 3rd party for some of the "prep" stuff and then switch over to OEM for the ceremony, and reception. I figure I can charge one of the OEM's while using the other one. I know eventually I'd like three probably to be safe... Anyway, should I be okay with that set up? Am I asking for trouble with so few OEM batteries? Typically how much record time can you get out of one battery? I usually end up with 2.5 hrs worth of footage for an 8-10 hour day at a wedding. Thanks for any help.
 
Do not depend on 3rd party batteries for the GH2. The ones I had never gave even half the runtime of the OEM battery, and when they "died" it was without ANY WARNING! Even during the prep parts you don't need the camera suddenly going dead because the battery did. You have NO GUARANTEE whatsoever you'll get even 10 minutes out of one even though yesterday it gave you 32minutes.

Azmyth over on hddv.net did manage to get by with 2 OEMs and a couple of 3rd party batteries while filming "The Legend Of Seven Toe Maggie" by recharding one OEM as soon as it was run down but that is not the same pace as running constantly at a wedding. I had 4 OEM batteries between 3 bodies and a pair of "knockoffs" I gave away so I wouldn't accidentally put one in the camera on a project.
 
I was planning on using the knock-offs for like 10 minutes record time max each one.

I may find I need a 3rd battery by the end of the weekend. I'm bringing a back-up camera anyway to be safe.
 
I have the same battery set up, and yes have a fresh OEM for the ceremony, and the second for the reception. I did a wedding last year like that. But you may want to have the first one back on the charger while using the second one. Third party battery, have it just in case.
 
Actually I did just fine. Ended up shooting about 2 and a half hours of footage, over the course of 10 hours. Used the knock-off for the prep shooting (about an 15 minutes of actual footage). Immediately switched to OEM for the first-look, the location shots, and the ceremony. Didn't have to switch until we arrived at the reception. Then switched to another OEM and it was still at 2 bars by the end of the reception. I'm impressed :) I did a few things to help save battery. I used the EVF whenever I could, I also turned off OIS when on a tripod. Both of those things probably helped, and I also shot everything unhacked, which I know helps as well.
 
Hi Kedara. Is there any other places than UK (paticularly Canada) where we can find this battery grip ? Aside on chinese knock offs, I've never found anything else, yet.
 
FWIW, I ordered a couple of knock-off EZO brand batteries from eBay and got them on Friday. They came half charged. I used one for 3 hours shooting 4k video at a rodeo, never had to put in my fully charged Panasonic battery that came with the camera.

Put in a fully charged EZO battery yesterday morning and headed out to shoot text footage. Shot about 45 minutes of footage over 5 hours with the camera on most of the time and the battery dropped to just under 50%. I'm very impressed with them.

I bought them after several positive recommendations on CheesyCam in some comments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top