Solar AA battery chargers thru-hiking

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rlown
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Re: Solar AA battery chargers thru-hiking

Post by rlown »

fishmonger wrote: For the HD camera, the custom built external Litium pack should weigh less than 200g and run for more than 4 days. Worst case will be the Muir Ranch to Whitney section, where we'd need a second set of batteries or bring my two fully charged regular batteries as well. This is still far lighter than the Solar charger, though, requires no time parked in the sun for hours, and is guaranteed to work.
I'd actually like to start carrying an HD camcorder. I'd be interested in what you build. In all my research on the Canon line of HD recorders, they never mention a DC recharge option, anyway.

So, how many Li battery packs would i have to take on a 7 day trip for let's say, 15 hrs of recording?

Russ
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Re: Solar AA battery chargers thru-hiking

Post by fishmonger »

rlown wrote:
I'd actually like to start carrying an HD camcorder. I'd be interested in what you build. In all my research on the Canon line of HD recorders, they never mention a DC recharge option, anyway.

So, how many Li battery packs would i have to take on a 7 day trip for let's say, 15 hrs of recording?

Russ
still am in the testing period. I don't know if I have to add a regulator. My first try is to just put 5 cells in series for about 9V - the DC charger input on the camera (canon HV20, smae as HV30 and probably the new model) is 8.4V, while the batteries are 7.4V.

If that doens't go so well, I will have to add another cell to get high enough above the 8.4V and regulate it down to 8.4V, or I will need to sacrifice a battery to make an adapter to feed 7.4V through the battery contacts.

I'll have more info in a week or two - currently am a few cells short of being able to test with real Lithiums.

There is no aftermarket option for this, as light wight appears to be irrelevant. Most users are generally close to a car and a simple 12V to 110V AC inverter works for them - they just plug the camera charger into the inverter which plugs into the cig ligher and charge the camera.

In terms of running time, I think the Lithiums will deliver about 2 times the life of a large camcorder battery, so one pack should be enough for almost 3 hours of recording. I'd say I'll need a set every 4 days on the trail just to make sure i have enough juice to do the things I had no battery for last year, such as a long shot of a sunset for time lapse use, etc.

what camcorder do you have? you realy want to bring one that uses tape, none of the internal hard drive mess, which compresses the heck out of your footage and does eventually run out of space with no way to unload the data when you're on the trail.
Last edited by fishmonger on Thu Dec 30, 2010 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Solar AA battery chargers thru-hiking

Post by fishmonger »

hukhuk wrote:What is the difference between digital camera and Camcorder in the context of still picture issue?
this thread is from 2009 - things have changed a lot in the area you are interested in (better still, usable video). Almost every midrange DSLR now has at least 720p video, the newest models all shoot 1080p. Plus, they use better lenses than any consumer camcorder you can buy. They are not the same thing (lack of depth of field, the thing indie filmmakers are looking for, makes it much harder to keep things in focus that move). You have to set up each video shot much more carefully, because most DSLR cameras can't use their high end autofocus sensors in video mode, but on a mountain that only matters in camp and people shots, or trying to track that bear that's making it away with your Ursack.

The still images you can pull from a dedicated camcorder are much lower quality than what even a dirt cheap 4 year old DSLR will produce, so if your emphasis is mostly on good still with some backup video to shoot the occasional moment that asks for motion video, then you really should look at something like Nikon D7000 or equivalent Canon or Sony camera. They are all around the price of a higher quality camcorder, but produce images vastly better than the camcorder.

and to keep things related to the Solar charger subject: the DSLR I currently use works just fine with AA Lithium batteries I added in a $45 power grip, letting me ditch the entire solar gear. I hike a few pounds lighter with the DSLR setup and shoot much better photos, while video is still an option of the situation asks for it. Sound is crappy, but I don't care much. I'm not out there to shoot a documentary film and the still images have shown to be more valuabe (print books, etc).

let me get you some examples of how that works out:

this is a small reduction of a 720p camcorder frame grab

http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gall ... _break.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Used in my blurb-printed book, this would come out about 2.5" x 1.5" before getting fuzzy

a full gallery made from camcorder video footage here - took a lot of work in Adobe Premier to extract, but it "does the job" if you didn't bring a still camera.

here a 2010 image from a Nikon D90:

http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/gall ... C_2051.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

so far so good, but the full size image actually is 12MP, not about 2mp as the camcorder produced - click here for full resolution

video quality? compare these two sources in the gallery link below - 2008 and 2009 is the camcorder, 2010 is the Nikon DSLR
Camcorder (Canon HV20 - kind of a cult camera)
Nikon D90 (720p with 11kHz audio - about as bad as DSLR video gets)

http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/Muir ... /video.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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