V mount batteries for LED lights

L

LennyLevy

Veteran
It looks like I will need to pick up some V mount batteries to run my intellytech TC-160 light mat and a similar Falcon Eyes RX-24TD light. So far I've managed to avoid going the V mount route and have Sony L batts and the EX-1 type batteries in 60WH and 90Wh versions but even with a V mount adapter I can't get those to power my Falcon Eyes . Not sure what the problem is there frankly and I need to do a little more testing. Haven't been able to make it work with a D tap from the batt to the light yet either. When I try a dual L battery to V Mt adapter the draw from the light is so large that the L batteries shut down apparently due to a protection circuit. Put them on a charger for a second and they are fully back at full charge till I try them on the RX24 again.

I should get invested in V mounts anyway for use with FS7 and XDCA back so maybe this is just forcing my hand.

Do you guys have any advice for less expensive but reliable V mount batteries and charger. Also do you need a special battery rated for high discharge rates? These LED mats supposedly draw around 150W.

Thanks for any help

Lenny
 
Lights and vlock need careful research - my Hawkwoods batt got popped by a light.

Watt hours is not a stat that tells you anything about current delivery which you need to calculate in amps

Personally I'm running my led super panels off leisure batts or the mains - yep massive yacht/caravan batts that are super cheap (big and heavy)

So find the Max current on any vlock you buy and do the math on your lights.. 150w is a lot - basically too much for a single v lock
 
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Depending how you work v lock could be expensive.

10min interviews? you will get away with it

Lights on all day? Probably another solution. My lights tend to stay in long as director and art dept seem to expect "vision" at all times
 
I guess my though is v locks were initially designed to deliver low current - 20-30 watts over 4 odd hours - typical camera swap batts at lunch.

So you might end up with two types or running them in parallel or burning through them and having none left to run your camera in the pm.

Safer might be to have different batts with diffenret connectors so your crew can't burn camera batts.

Twisted logic but the reason that I elected not to buy mounts adapters for my lights but invest in a seperate system

My fresnels (200w) need 28v anyway

Of course I have a couple of tiny LEDs and am happy to bpu then for 15mins
 
As Sam said, you need to look out for high amperage output from 12v batteries if you want to run any moderately powerful LEDs.

I went with the Anton Bauer 'Cine' batteries for that reason. They can output 12 amps, which gives them enough oomph to power 150w LED units at full power.
 
Haven't had trouble powering my rx-24tdx from my $180 150wh power-u batteries. But I rarely run them at full power on batteries and I doing any v-mount could do 150w comfortably
 
Grug said:
As Sam said, you need to look out for high amperage output from 12v batteries if you want to run any moderately powerful LEDs.

I went with the Anton Bauer 'Cine' batteries for that reason. They can output 12 amps, which gives them enough oomph to power 150w LED units at full power.
Click to expand...

So AB cine are 500 dollars, you could easily spend $3k setting up.

My 'solution' the batts are $100 and charger $50 - $250 for four hours on two hundred watt panels

Obviously Id take his solution, but Im already in for $2g of hawkwoods vlock that cant deliver the current (unless you run them in parrallel)
 
IDX have been very good for me after several years, but you are going to need their big capacities to run those lights, something as large or larger than their 90wh packs. Basically I suggest looking at their specs. and contacting sales with your requirements.
 
Lights can draw a lot more juice than even power hungry cameras such as Alexas so it seem wise to choose batteries designed for a high draw. Lesser batteries might work, but won’t be happy.

If the batteries are worked daily it might even make sense to look into Nickel versions instead of Lithium as these love to ‘live hard, & die fast’. Also Nickel batteries can be checked as baggage when traveling by air.
 
I've had good luck with IDX, and in the less-costly class, Batteries4Broadcast...which look similar to the Global Media Pro batteries a friend uses on his LED lights.

B4B (and probably GMP & other 2nd-tier resellers) are pretty good about describing the maximum draw of their batteries. For example, they say their B4B 190Wh battery has a max draw of 90W, which works fine in my Astras with a 110W max draw... as long as they're not on full-blast (which they rarely are...and are plugged in when they are).

So anyway, I"ve had good luck with B4B and a few years ago, when FedEx screwed up a delivery but didn't want to admit it, B4B sent me another battery right away and pressed FedEx to resolve the situation... Turns out FedEx delivered the battery to a place with the same street number but on a different street a couple blocks over. A mistake, but FedEx shined me on... B4B made things right and didn't leave me w/o a battery while they got FedEx to resolve the issue. So anyway, B4B does offer some real support.

Check them out... they give specs for their batteries so you can probably find something that'll work with your lights. Probably some other similar venders will do the same. For me, the lower cost vs AB & IDX is worth the not-top-tier development, etc... I can see others feeling differently.
https://batteries4broadcast.com
 
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