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Extended Time Lapse battery questions.

tmcglasgow

New Member
I hope its ok starting this.... I am a visual artist about to do some extended work in a forest just north of here. I need to set up both of my Ricoh cameras to capture at least 18hours if not 48 or 72 hours of stop action film. The limitation of course is the battery. I've used the Ricoh on battery and also with the UK mains power charger.

I am wondering if I couldn't buy a couple of the mains power chargers, cut the line from the shoe that goes into the camera/battery slot and wire it to something like this?

Ravpower Specifications:
-Capacity; 10000 mAh
- Input: DC 5V / 1A
- Output 1: DC 5V / 1A
- Capacity; 10000 mAh
- Input: DC 5V / 1A
- Output 1: DC 5V / 1A
- Output 2: DC 5V / 2A
- Size: 5.31" x 2.75" x 0.55"
- Weight: 8.29 oz
- Product Warranty: One Full Year
 
For 18, 48 or 72 hours I think you will need mains power & a massive SD card.
I to am currently looking for a USB cable to tether my YSD-998 Rechargeable Li-ion Battery to a Ricoh RDC-7 because it will run from input when the camera battery is removed.
The rechargeable Li-ion battery has
Input 12.6VDC
Output 12.VCD 6500mAh
Output 9.0 VCD 8500mAh
Output 5.0 VCD 15000mAh
I got it to drive a camera slider motor 12v DC & am thinking of using it to run my Ricoh RDC-7 for time lapse.
If it would do 5 hours @ 1 frame per 30 secs. I would be happy.

Also there is a risk of over heating the camera with extended operating times which will lead to the camera shutting down.
 
Anyone have any thoughts on the efficacy of buying a mains power charger, cut the line from the shoe that goes into the camera/battery slot and wire it to this portable battery for extended camera life during time lapse photography?

-Capacity; 10000 mAh
- Input: DC 5V / 1A
- Output 1: DC 5V / 1A
- Capacity; 10000 mAh
- Input: DC 5V / 1A
- Output 1: DC 5V / 1A
- Output 2: DC 5V / 2A
 
I think for a long length of time you will need to go with 12V DC lead acid car battery then into a power inverter like the ones used for caravans, camping & boating. They switch the current from 12v DC to AC. Then you can plug your Ricoh AC-4c power adapter straight into that. Defiantly quieter than a mains power AC generator. You will need to swap out your SD card at some point for the length of time your after. As the Ricoh GX200 only supports an SDHC card up to 16GB. It may or may not support a 32GB. At the same time of swapping a card out you could switch the battery with a fresh one.
48 to 72 hours is a long time for a card or battery.
 
Be aware that it is impossible to take out the memory card while the camera is attached to a tripod. So you either have to download the images via USB cable and delete the card from time to time (but I'm not sure if this is possible while the camera is running in the interval mode), or compute the interval between the shots in such a way that you don't run out of space during your timelapse sequence.

Good luck and best regards,
Martin
 
I think, for such cases, it would be best to use a wifi enabled card like Eye-Fi or Toshiba AirFlash so you one can download (and maybe even delete) photos from card without the need of cable connection? As far as I know, Ricoh directly supports EyeFi in their recent cameras. But to my knowledge, both EyeFi and AirFlash should work even without a special support in camera FW.
 
Morning
Thanks for all of your responses, I am aware of the memory issues and have transitions built in to account for the 16gig max on the GX200. Its the power supply issue I am struggling with if anyone has any ideas. A battery powered 240v charger will discharge fairly quickly, they are failure prone if fully discharged and I will be doing that a few times over the life of the project.

The new lightweight lithium-ion batteries are supposedly the way to go. I was able to get info on the other camera I use for this kind of project and it works fine. Although I can connect the battery directly to that camera through a mini-USB connection. However, would -really- prefer to use the Ricoh which at the end of the day provides a much better image than anything else I have!

Any thoughts on cutting that 240v factory power shoe and wiring it directly to the lithium-ion battery describe above? Any other ideas or comments are of course always appreciated as well.
 
I understand the question is more electronic than camera.... How to get to a Ricoh engineer that can talk me through this? The other camera that was the path I took and got through with three phone calls. With the Ricoh and its recent mergers (the fact that the camera is old) I end up against a blind wall with no way to proceed. Anyone have some thoughts about getting to an R-engineer?

t
 
Notes: After various phone calls, and going through the Ricoh official website I got absolutely no where with the 'online' engineers repeatedly stating that there is no support for extended battery use, and no way to speak to an engineer directly.

However... today I got through to someone at the EU repair centre who provided a phone number for technical advice. I spoke to an amazing engineer who has cautioned that I need to stay within the limits of 3.8v but higher amperage is fine. The shoe is the only way to power the camera, so the clip and rewire plan will work. I was able to confirm the availability of a battery at 3.8v so... with a bit of diligence and a little help from the Ricoh community and I may get this done yet. Thanks to all that responded.

TC in Glasgow.
 
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