It is said that age brings advice, that people of a certain age have a more propensity to complain…

This is the premise of a Genoese, citizen of the world who in the DNA bears the concept of "mugugno", dialectal word that indicates a continuous and low-voice lament, which this time complains of complaints… sometimes age brings experience and you complain less, but you point to the result.

For some years now, among the most useless complaints I find that of the poor battery life, that the rooms can not be used because their power supply is greedy of current, because every 3×2 have to change the battery, etc… normally these kinds of complaints come from filmakers who level up or start from medium-high-level digital cameras and cameras (as quality) at an honest price.

Before we talk about rooms, we make a simple reasoning about a much simpler product (let's say), the smartphone, object that is in everyone's pockets, and those who use mobile phones for longer know that smartphones are greedy objects of current, if you arrive in the evening using it really is a miracle, especially for those who were used to using mobile phones of yes kind, whose battery (1/3 of the mAh of the current ones) lasted by telephones wide from 8
to 10 DAYS. To make a smartphone battery last during the day you often find yourself:

  • disable wifi if we are not connected (search consumes a lot of current)
  • disable GPS (with gps active and used by the apps on many smartphones we have less than 2 hours of autonomy)
  • Disabling BlueTooth (constant searching for devices to mate reduces cellular range)
  • in areas with severe electrical disturbances or with field problems it is important to force you to use a slower connection such as 3g or gprs, otherwise the continuous field search could consume the battery at the speed of light.

But without thinking about the stand by, have you ever wondered why the cell phone if you talk so much on the phone heats up? It's all current dispersed in heat, a lot of current…

Because if you play challenging games on your mobile phone, the battery disappears? because it is using the GPU and this causes a very high battery consumption, often for trivial operations, for games with the same graphics that ran on an 8bit processor, with 64k of memory, but here it must all be managed with a 64bit octacore and therefore waste on power waste.

Have you ever wondered why cell phone recordings warm up the device so much, and if you slow down after a tot stops to prevent overheating (although it's actually already hot).

Whether you use a phone with Ios or Android or WP you will have recognized more than one of these situations, but do not complain about it, indeed, you get excited that it has that potential, at most put a powerbank in your pocket.

If you use a camera, the concept that you have to use a proper power battery to use the product is not acceptable… curious analogy, isn't it?

In fact all this is only a recent problem, because the new "mugugnoni" born with phones are convinced that the batteries should last forever, people who have never used amateur cameras with ridiculous batteries (40-50 minutes basic) because the tapes more than one tot had no autonomy, often to get to 60 minutes you had to buy the most capacious batteries.

Operators using more serious rooms are familiar with the 100-200w vmount and gmount batteries that provide a more productive lifespan, or the old belt batteries, which added weight to operators already loaded with 10-15kg of camercorder on their shoulders, but provided more energy.

Having quality, sensitivity, low compression requires energy. It is no coincidence that many cameras and cine cameras generate a lot of heat and consume a lot of energy.

Now if you claim to have a Ferrari or at least a Lamborghini and that you consume like a 50 scooter, do so, but as it does not work in the automotive sector, it does not work in electronics either…

We learn to read between the lines, and if a camera battery allows 350 shots, why should it allow the camera to stay on for hours, with sensor that reads and all other electronic devices running?

If a camera comes with a standard battery (BMD, Sony, Canon), but then there are larger batteries, battery packs, etc. maybe it is because the standard battery serves for a more limited or specific use of the object?

How to calculate the power of a battery

Try to read the battery consumption of your room, do two accounts of the servant and you will understand many things. Often there are so many different acronyms, it is not easy to understand how to understand consumption and duration times.

Normally consumption is indicated in W i.e. Watts per hour of operation, we take a camera for example the BMD Pocket4k, which is highly criticized for the buffer battery, machine that has as consumption indicated 22w.

A professional battery is indicated with the W dispensed for hours, so if we have a 95w Gmount battery it means that 95/22 offers a lifespan of about 4.31 hours of battery life.

Smaller batteries, on the other hand, are indicated the capacity in mAh, so to understand its capacity we have to make a small calculation where :
the Watt expresses the electrical power, Ampere the current, Volt is the voltage delivered.

A Watt corresponds to Ampere x Volt

Ampere x Volt-Wat
tSThen a 1300 mAh x 7.3v battery plus 9.4w
/hMa if the room requires 22w/h the fact that the battery in question lasts 30 minutes is correct, it is not a defect or a design error, it is simply a basic math.

Cameras have batteries that last longer, and cost more

When taking a C100MkII the battery provided is from 4900 mAh or 37W and since the room consumes 10W it is no wonder that almost 4 hours, however it costs 200 euros, not 30-40 as many claim from those bmd… and we think that the suggested one that costs 400 euros is from 7800 mAh or 58w, but since that is a room that costs more we are not surprised that they cost more batteries.

If we take a camera that uses the same battery as the Pocket4k, the 5D Mk IV, we find that without using the display (so using the optical viewfinder to save battery) the camera can only make (from canon manual) only 900 shots. Reading the specifications on the manual, the camera consumes about 14w/h then using it to make videos, without having the mirror mechanism that rises and lowers even she can not reach a shooting duration of hours.

In my experience only with mirrorless Panasonic I was able to do long shots, theatrical performances etc with the standard battery, but no one complains about the BMD as of other rooms, for example the Alfa7S2 has a consumption of 13w/h with batteries from 1020 mAh to 7.2v, this time I leave to the reader the simple calculation on how long the room can last on…

Now in all this article what do we deduce?

Whether Canon or Sony producing cameras and cameras, they are not fools, but simply divide the product categories, so for cameras and cameras there are large and sufficient batteries to do their job, while in the cameras they allow to make short videos, but even if they have strong inclinations to the video, the battery compartment is not designed for real and direct competition to the video department (excluding external batteries , battery packs and similar).

That Blackmagic Design producing a series called CINEMA camera introduces buffer batteries to allow the external battery change without interrupting filming, or for fast run & gun shooting (for which there are actioncams, cameras, mirrorless and dslr more oriented to this) or for use on gimbal where weight and agility are the priority of the product, and a battery from 1500-1600 mAh offers sufficient autonomy to work.

Then you have to check:

  • the consumption of a room and adjust us accordingly
  • consumption and capacity of a room and/or battery before purchase, downloading the user manual and/or using google
  • the lens for which that given camera or battery was created: quality or capacity, flexibility or verticality, durability or lightness.

There will be fewer surprises, but above all less useless "moguls" on the web and directed 😀

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