combatentropy
Veteran
Does anyone know if there are any XLR adapters that are externally powered, like with a D-Tap cable?
As you all know, there are two kinds of XLR adapters: those that provide phantom power and those that don't. The ones that do take a 9-volt battery.
One of the beautiful things about the standard, shoulder-mount camera is that you need only worry about one battery. It powers the camera, viewfinder, light, and microphones. Some even have a slot for a wireless microphone receiver so you don't have to remember a battery for that (you still have to remember the battery in the transmitter, of course). And then the battery itself has its own D-Tap jacks so you can string on even more accessories and power them.
But those rigs are too big and expensive for me. I'd rather have a small camera, even one of the DSLRs. But then you're back to needing an XLR adapter, and the number of batteries to keep track of has doubled. It triples if you try to use a third-party viewfinder that takes only batteries, but I'm seeing more and more of those with external power jacks, usually mini-XLR or D-tap, but D-tap seems more prevalent.
So you could rig up a pocket-size camera with just about all the amenities of the DVX body style and all run off one battery if someone would make a D-Tap-powered XLR adapter.
Note: For those of you have heard of D-Tap and P-Tap and wondering what's the difference, it turns out that one is trademarked and one is not. There's no working difference. Anton Bauer calls their jacks PowerTap, or P-Tap for short. Everyone else says D-Tap.

As you all know, there are two kinds of XLR adapters: those that provide phantom power and those that don't. The ones that do take a 9-volt battery.
One of the beautiful things about the standard, shoulder-mount camera is that you need only worry about one battery. It powers the camera, viewfinder, light, and microphones. Some even have a slot for a wireless microphone receiver so you don't have to remember a battery for that (you still have to remember the battery in the transmitter, of course). And then the battery itself has its own D-Tap jacks so you can string on even more accessories and power them.
But those rigs are too big and expensive for me. I'd rather have a small camera, even one of the DSLRs. But then you're back to needing an XLR adapter, and the number of batteries to keep track of has doubled. It triples if you try to use a third-party viewfinder that takes only batteries, but I'm seeing more and more of those with external power jacks, usually mini-XLR or D-tap, but D-tap seems more prevalent.
So you could rig up a pocket-size camera with just about all the amenities of the DVX body style and all run off one battery if someone would make a D-Tap-powered XLR adapter.
Note: For those of you have heard of D-Tap and P-Tap and wondering what's the difference, it turns out that one is trademarked and one is not. There's no working difference. Anton Bauer calls their jacks PowerTap, or P-Tap for short. Everyone else says D-Tap.

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