Powering Ninja 2 w/ Swit S-8972

[Al Yeung]

I have an FS100 and an thinking of getting the Ninja 2. I am thinking of getting the Swit S-8972 battery which has a 2.1mm 7.2V pole power out, then get one of Dolgin's 2.1mm to D-tap cables, and then put the cable to the D-tap dummy battery plate to power the Ninja 2. I know that kind of sounds more trouble than it's worth, but is that workable?

Does the Ninja 2 require both batteries to be attached to work? Or would just the d-tap be okay?

Thank you very much.

[Duncan Say]

Does the Ninja 2 require both batteries to be attached to work? Or would just the d-tap be okay?

The only question I can answer is that you don't need to both batteries for this to work but the d-tap should be in slot 1 at the back of the Ninja.

Looking at the spec of the Swit battery you'll probably need a couple of them at least to get through a day...

[Al Yeung]

Thank you Duncan. I've seen your blog and basically am getting your set-up.

The Swit is equivalent to the NPF970, which runs the FS100 for over 5 hours. I've read here that two NPF570's power the Ninja (running SSDs) for about 5 hours? So probably the Swit will power both the FS100 and the Ninja for 2-3 hours.

Anyway, I have this idea because I want the minimize weight and streamline my battery setup (to have only one battery level to monitor and one or two batteries to charge instead of 4 or 5). But I doubt this would actually be that much lighter (if at all). And the extra cable may be more trouble than an extra battery.

[Duncan Say]

I think it is an interesting idea, but I like having a bit more weight at the back of the camera to balance things out on a tripod and having the Ninja behind the camera does that very well.

I used to get nearly eight hours out of a NPF970, which was so good I often forgot to turn the camera off. Now that the camera triggers the Ninja 2 and I am recording on both, the camera eats up a 970 in about four hours. The Ninja gets through the two 570s on the back in about four hours as well.

So I think you'll be doing well to get two hours out of one of these batteries.

[Al Yeung]

Thanks Duncan. Yes, the 970 does actually power my FS100 all day. Maybe not 10 hours in my case but close. I am puzzled that the Ninja cuts that time by half! I mean, the FS100 isn't really doing anything more beyond sending HDMI signal to the Ninja, right?

By the way, I've read so many times on online forums that there's no appreciable difference between internal AVCHD and external recording on the FS100. This really surprises me. I had a nanoFlash and played with it with my FS100. At high iso, the 100mbps (not to mention 180) footage from the nanoFlash is much better looking. More detailed, less mush with sharp transitions from dark to light. The noise becomes actually quite attractive grain. And I mean just recorded footage, not processed.

At low iso settings and in scenes without lots of details, it is harder to tell.

[Duncan Say]

Well I just did a shoot where I was recording all day onto the internal SD cards and this started using up the camera battery at quite a lick.

Having the Ninja attached wouldn't make any difference (in my case), it was merely that I never bothered to use the on camera record function before, but now that the Ninja 2 can be stopped and started by the camera, I've started using it and it has been a lifesaver in one situation.

However in your situation where you are powering both devices I feel that not only will recording on both burn into your battery time but also the fact that you are drawing much more current will lower the capacity of battery quicker than if the camera and the ninja were powered separately.

I have no evidence to back that up though.

I think that the question as to the difference between AVC-HD and less compressed footage is a long and complex one but can be easily stated as:

If you can't tell the difference and your work is not mission critical, you don't need it. Forget about it, it's irrelevant for you.

If you can tell and your work requires it, then you do.