Battery life question

[Biko]

A company have asked me to about taking photographs over seven days.

I will be using my 20d and a photo will be taken every 3 minutes 24hrs full seven days, one option is to leave the camera set up and on its own for the duration.

it is in the summer so warm weather should help with drainage. Even a grip and fully charged batteries would be pushing it. Does anyone know about say using a car battery and adaptor and would it be ok for duration and amount of shots? There is no power source where the camera is to be located.

[FlyingPete]

How about the AC adaptor, an inverter and a car battery? Better if you could forgo the AC part and run straight of the car battery though.

BTW I learnt the hard way a few years ago not to mess around to much with customising power supplies, I desperatly wanted more battery life for my digicam at the time, so a attempted to hook up some 'D' cells in my back pack to the charge socket on the camera, failed miserably, so did the camera, turned out that it didn't take a straight DC charge, but a pulsed one.

[alan sh]

20 per hour times 24 hours times 7 is 3360 photos. You want to do it without user intervention ?

1. What storage card are you using which holds that ?
2. No battery lasts that long. If you are lucky, a battery grip with 2 batteries will last you 1000 photos.
3. What are you using to press the shutter every 3 mins. As far as I know, the 20D doesn't have this feature in the firmware.

So, come back to the real world and tell us what you are REALLY trying to do - then maybe we can help.

Alan

[FlyingPete]

20 per hour times 24 hours times 7 is 3360 photos. You want to do it without user intervention ?

1. What storage card are you using which holds that ?
2. No battery lasts that long. If you are lucky, a battery grip with 2 batteries will last you 1000 photos.
3. What are you using to press the shutter every 3 mins. As far as I know, the 20D doesn't have this feature in the firmware.


If it is standard time lapse, I have done this on my G3, which incudes an AC adaptor, three minutes in not unreasonable, however I did drop the resolution down, as I only required 1024x768 as the final product.

There is a cable releas option availalble for the 20D with a intervalometer (TC80N3)built in - not cheap though RRP$199US :(

Perhaps it might be better to use an alternative to the 20D such as a G-Series?

[Mogwyth]

To connect to a car battery you will need a dc-dc convertor and the Dc coupler from the Canon Ac adapter Kit ACK-E2. You will need to do a bit of adapting but it will do the job. I have used a simular set up on a camcorder.

www.eurobatteries.com do quite a range of adapters. Make sure you match your voltages etc properly

[bigadg]

why not use one of those car battery boosters with a cigarete lighter socket

and a inverter and your ac adapter
inveters are so usefull
stu

[Biko]

Thanks for your help :) So hooking up the AC adaptor ACK-E2 is possible and using a cigarette lighter could get over the power problem.

FlyingPete, Thanks, you are right it is for a timelapse a construction company are wanting a project timelapsed over 5 days (other 2 days are project in use before and after) their project has to come in on time otherwise they are seriously in trouble, they want to record it if possible. I have a G3 but is out of the question due to the intervalometer only allowing 100 shots at a time so will be using a TC-80N3.


20 per hour times 24 hours times 7 is 3360 photos. You want to do it without user intervention ?

1. What storage card are you using which holds that ?
2. No battery lasts that long. If you are lucky, a battery grip with 2 batteries will last you 1000 photos.
3. What are you using to press the shutter every 3 mins. As far as I know, the 20D doesn't have this feature in the firmware.

So, come back to the real world and tell us what you are REALLY trying to do - then maybe we can help.

Alan

My question is specific which is why I called it Battery life question and would expect answers to it which people apart from you have kindly done. I gave enough information including: Even a grip and fully charged batteries would be pushing it. which you seem to have ignored judging by your answer 2. Answer to your question 1. A 2Gb card can get aprox 2800 pictures on lowest setting, bigger cards are now available. Question 3 has been answered.

I do live in the real world thankyou.

[pcasciola]

I was going to suggest hooking the camera up to a small laptop and using Canon Remote Capture software, but I've used that for astrophotography and it really cuts down the battery life on the camera, so keep that in mind in case that option comes up. If that does become an option though, you will not have to worry about storage because the pictures are stored on the laptop and not the CF card.

I use one of those jump start packs for extended power on my laptop for astrophotography as well, and some of the better ones in the $100 range have built in inverters with regular AC outlets that you could plug the ACK-E2 directly in to.