Anton Bauer battery life

[Jerry Jesion]

Just got the A/B battery and used it to shoot ~40 minutes the other day and the voltage got to 14.7. Does anyone have any real life experience with the battery life while recording? I often have to record for 2+ hours and wish to know if the A/B Trimpac will last. With moderate use of the zoom. What is the voltage where the camera will quit? 11V or so that A/B quotes?

Regards,
Jerry

[Scott Keyworth]

Jerry,

Estimated runtime can be found by dividing watt-hours into watts
EX: A TrimPac 14 battery is a 45 watt hour camera
If a camera has a 20 watt power consumption (HD110).
45watt-hours/20 watts= 2.25 hours.

Most cameras operate on a range of voltage for 11.0 to 17.0V or 12v -1+5

I hope this helps.

Scott Keyworth
Anton/Bauer, Inc.

[Jim Andrada]

Jerry,

We seem to be in perfect sync - we got our A/B kits from JVC within a day and now we have battery life questions at the same time.

I noticed that the Trimpac does seem to lose some charge fairly quickly after removing it from the charger even if not connected to anything, so I think it might be a good idea to leave it mounted on the charger and the charger on the camera and leave it plugged in until shortly before you shoot.

I sprang for a Dionic 90 as a second battery and my totally unscientific feeling is that it stays "topped up" better than the Trimpac. Maybe Scott can comment and I could be all wet as I haven't had time to do any kind of definitive or extensive testing yet.

Just my unsubstantiated gut feel from playing with the camera and A/B batteries for a few hours.

Dionic is much lighter than the Trimpac, Watt hour for Watt hour.

[Don Bloom]

The Trimpac is a NiCad where the Dionics are LIon type so there is certainly a difference in battery chemistry. That said becarefule with the Trimpac and charging-it is POSSIBLE, notice I said possible to 'overcharge' the battery and then it goes dead pretty quick.
A very wise though not inexpensive solution to the charging of the batteries is t oget an AB intellicharger. It doesn't have to be a 4 position, a 2 position will work just great. Not only will it charge the differnt chemistries BUT it will condition the batteries as well. I found when using my Hytrons120s OR Dionic 90s that when they weren't in use they were on the charger and they have worked perfectly for a long time with no dead cells.
I know it's a costly option but frankly if you have a "few" hundred tied up in batteries you wwant them to last for as long as possible so the charger would be a great investment. Remember you can use ABs on just about any camera out there with the right mount. I've used mine on different Sony's, JVC and Ikes. Worked like a champ as always.
Don

[Scott Keyworth]

The charger you got in the JVC package is a Tandem 70. This charger will charge all A/B batteries regardless of chemistry. It has the same charging software as the to of the line Quad 2702.

A TrimPac 14 is a Nicad battery. NiCad batteries, as a rule of thumb, have a self-discharge rate of approximately 5% the first day off the charger and 1% each day after that.

LiIon Batteries have a much lower self discharge rate.

For best life span and runtime performance Anton/Bauer recommends that a battery remains on a powered up charger when not not in use with the camera.

For more in depth information please download the "Video Battery Handbook" from our web site.

http://antonbauer.com/downloads/2002Handbook.pdf

Scott Keyworth
Anton/Bauer, Inc

[Jim Andrada]

Scott,

Thanks much for the reassurance re the Tandem charger. You've also helped explain the fast self discharge I noticed with the Trimpac - it seems to be sort of an exponential decay ie it probably loses quite a bit in the first hour or two, then less and less each hour until it sort of stabilizes at the 1%/day rate you mentioned.

I had noticed that the Trimpac seemed to drop from 16 V to 15.8 V or so pretty quickly after coming off the charger.

[Alessandro Machi]

The Dionic 90 Battery I seem to recall will shut off somewhere above 12 volts. When fully charged I have gotten around a 15.4 volt reading then it slowly drops and settles in around low 14's to the high 13's. I think the battery either shuts off well before 11 volts OR the battery's voltage will drop down very quickly near the end of its cycle and then shut off. I actually use my AB to power a DC light that's why I don't recall how it worked on my camera.

I do recall that the Dionic 90 ran my JVC KY 27B for almost three hours (in cold weather) while the camera was in start and stop mode throught out that entire time, pretty impressive actually for a battery that weighs less than 2 pounds.

The Tandem 70 charger can be used to power a camera and a battery can also be left attached to the other side of the charger. The idea is whenever the camera is powered down the charger automatically switches tasks and begins charging the battery (like during a lunch break). However the charger does not do simultaneous camera power and charging.

AB also makes a portable double charger that will charge two AB's at once but it actually takes a bit longer to charger those two batteries. (something like 5 to 5.5 hours for the portable double charger instead of 3 hours per battery on the Tandem 70). So if you are hoping to get an extra cycle during a shoot day and only have two AB batteries, one of which is on your camera, you're actually better off with the tandem 70. If however it's the day before the shoot and you just want to put two batteries on charge at the same time and then go on to other tasks... lol, you see how you almost need more than one charger.

I think it takes a minimum of 3 hours to charge the dionic 90 on the tandem 70. On a couple of occasions I felt the charger and battery got too warm, I don't know why exactly. I recommend charging when there is supervision around. There is an automatic shut off that I think activates around 137 degrees farenheit, I'm just not confident it will always shut off if the charger reaches that temperature.

I think the Dionic life span is based more on calendar years than actual cycles, but I'm not entirely sure about that. I think they are supposed to last between 3-5 years.