I sometimes have to shoot corporate live events that last all day, so I've been looking for a battery solution to power my GH5 for 8 hours or more.
After seeing a post about the Case Relay Power System : $135 with the GH5 dummy battery adapter, I bought one for my GH5 and a RAVPower 26,800 mAh Power Pack $49 to power it. It's a pretty compact solution and I like that I can swap out the power pack for another one without having to stop recording with my camera.
The Case Relay is really easy to use:
1- You insert the dummy battery into your GH5
2- Connect the Case Relay adapter to the dummy battery power connection plug
3- Connect the Case Relay USB plug to the power pack and then turn on your power pack
4- Turn on your GH5
To test this setup I used two formatted 128 GB SDXC cards, set my GH5 to record with the h.265 4K HLG 72 Mbps profile with the camera LCD and EVF both on, and then pressed record.
I let my camera run overnight, and when I checked things in the morning my camera was off and the RAVPower pack was pretty much spent.
Checking the SDXC cards, both cards were completely full with two video files that totalled about 117 GB.
Bringing the footage into my editor, I could see that my GH5 had recorded 4K footage for 9 hours 21minutes 20 seconds on both memory cards.
I'm guessing that it could have recorded for a few more hours if I had 256 GB memory cards in the camera.
So overall I'm really happy with the results, and I'm curious to repeat the test and see how much power is left in the RAVPower pack when the 9 hours and 21 minutes is done. ( I left the camera to run for 18 hours, so it was still running after the memory cards were full )
For those that are interested...
- The LED on the Case Relay adapter goes steady green when you first turn on a connected USB pack.
- When the connected USB pack runs out of power the Case Relay LED starts flashing green, which indicates that it is using it's own 1200 mAh battery that will power a GH5 camera for about another hour. This gives you the ability to swap out the spent connected USB pack with a fresh one, and when you do this the Case Relay LED goes back to steady green.
- When the built-in 1200 mAh battery for the Case Relay adapter is done the LED will switch to glowing bright RED, so you have to connect the Case Relay adapter to a fresh USB pack or the power to your camera will finally shut down within a few minutes.
The Case Relay system is really easy to use and I would highly recommend it if you need to power your GH5 camera all day with low cost batteries. ( I already use USB packs to charge my phones and tablets in the field, so it was a great fit for me )
After seeing a post about the Case Relay Power System : $135 with the GH5 dummy battery adapter, I bought one for my GH5 and a RAVPower 26,800 mAh Power Pack $49 to power it. It's a pretty compact solution and I like that I can swap out the power pack for another one without having to stop recording with my camera.
The Case Relay is really easy to use:
1- You insert the dummy battery into your GH5
2- Connect the Case Relay adapter to the dummy battery power connection plug
3- Connect the Case Relay USB plug to the power pack and then turn on your power pack
4- Turn on your GH5
To test this setup I used two formatted 128 GB SDXC cards, set my GH5 to record with the h.265 4K HLG 72 Mbps profile with the camera LCD and EVF both on, and then pressed record.
I let my camera run overnight, and when I checked things in the morning my camera was off and the RAVPower pack was pretty much spent.
Checking the SDXC cards, both cards were completely full with two video files that totalled about 117 GB.
Bringing the footage into my editor, I could see that my GH5 had recorded 4K footage for 9 hours 21minutes 20 seconds on both memory cards.
I'm guessing that it could have recorded for a few more hours if I had 256 GB memory cards in the camera.
So overall I'm really happy with the results, and I'm curious to repeat the test and see how much power is left in the RAVPower pack when the 9 hours and 21 minutes is done. ( I left the camera to run for 18 hours, so it was still running after the memory cards were full )
For those that are interested...
- The LED on the Case Relay adapter goes steady green when you first turn on a connected USB pack.
- When the connected USB pack runs out of power the Case Relay LED starts flashing green, which indicates that it is using it's own 1200 mAh battery that will power a GH5 camera for about another hour. This gives you the ability to swap out the spent connected USB pack with a fresh one, and when you do this the Case Relay LED goes back to steady green.
- When the built-in 1200 mAh battery for the Case Relay adapter is done the LED will switch to glowing bright RED, so you have to connect the Case Relay adapter to a fresh USB pack or the power to your camera will finally shut down within a few minutes.
The Case Relay system is really easy to use and I would highly recommend it if you need to power your GH5 camera all day with low cost batteries. ( I already use USB packs to charge my phones and tablets in the field, so it was a great fit for me )
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