The best thing about the Sony FS5 is its small, ergonomically balanced design. It’s a lightweight camera that begs to be hand held. So why would you want to screw that up by adding a big battery?

Well, actually, there are some good reasons. I’ve recently discovered the magic of using a Teradek ServPro so clients can follow along during a shoot. And, I almost always use an external monitor. If you’re powering those things independently, you begin to spend a lot of time changing batteries instead of making pictures.

So I picked up an adapter cable on ebay for $26, bought a Redrock micro cheese plate, and started cobbling building a solution that could give me three or four hours between battery changes.

But when I plugged in one of my four v-lock batteries, the camera gave me an error (right):

Hmm. So what the heck? I tried another (also fully charged) battery. Same error. Then I tried a bunch of other more expensive things, like buying a battery plate from Wooden Camera. Same problem! Then I accidentally grabbed a battery that was partially discharged already, and boom! It fired up just fine.

After a little testing, it turns out that you have to discharge your battery for just a couple minutes, for the FS5 to recognize it. Don’t ask me why this is a thing, but it is.

To power your FS5 with an v-mount battery, buy an adapter, and a battery plate. And then, prime your batteries by discharging them for a few minutes by firing up the monitor and other devices, before turning the camera on. Good to go!

A better (albeit more expensive) solution

I purchased a Wooden Camera V-Mount Battery Plate for Sony PXW-FS5/FS7, to see if that would fix the battery priming issue. It costs $195. The first one I purchased didn’t work at all. The helpful staff at Wooden Camera arranged a quick return. After the repair, the unit works flawlessly – without requiring battery priming. But you do have to purchase a Wooden Camera battery slide, for $193.03. So by the time you get done paying the bill, this proper solution adds up to $388.03. The Wooden Camera battery slide is also a pound lighter than the Redrock Micro cheese plate.

Footnote: It turns out that the way I’ve powered the camera in these photos is actually quite dangerous. As I discovered later, if the brick battery dies while you are rolling, your clips won’t be saved to disk, and you’ll lose the shot. Luckily, there’s a simple solution.

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Maybe it’s because I’m over 50. I don’t know. But I haven’t been very excited about new gear lately. Nevertheless, I’ve recently made a couple of discoveries that I think are pretty special. Here’s what and here’s why:

1. Kupo Medium Baby Kit Stand with square legs
2. Aputure COB300D led light

I shot a project last week where I needed to light a two-person studio setup (similar to the “I’m a Mac” campaign) in front of a white background. For this I needed to rent a fair bit of light – two lights to evenly light the background, and two bright key sources that I could bounce into 4×4 sheets of foam core to give me a nice, even key illumination on both subjects with a little room for them to move around. Here’s a couple frames from the shoot:

I went with two Zylight F8s for the background lights – tough to beat the 8″ fresnel with wi-fi control that allows both lights to be wirelessly linked. When you adjust the dimmer on one light, it automatically dims the other light identically. A real timesaver for evenly illuminating backgrounds.

When the key lights I initially asked for weren’t available at my rental house (I think I had asked for Kino Tegras), the helpful tech at Glazers suggested I try the new Aputure COB 300Ds. I’d heard of them after they won Best Lighting Product at NAB last year. But this was my first opportunity to try them. So I jumped on it.

Wow. The 300Ds are *$# BRIGHT!

I went from expecting to be at f/2.8 to f/5.6. I’m serious, it’s like a Joker 800-watt light, but it’s LED-easy to work with. You can throw two or three into your car and roll out with minimal crew or grip. And by minimal grip, I mean you don’t even need c-stands to rock these bad boys. You DO need to soften these lights, though – so hence, the extra stands needed for holding bounce/modifiers.

Kupo: a bad-ass baby stand

That’s where the Kupo Medium Kit Stands come in. Sporting a 5/8″ spud, the aluminum stands are so light that you can fit 4 of them into the same space that you would carry 2 c-stands – and a lot less weight. They reach to 9.5 feet tall, which is plenty for just about everything I do. And they have beefy, square legs that will support up to 23 pounds.

By chance, it turns out that the tripod case that comes with the Sachtler Flowtech 75 is precisely the length and girth to fit two of these stands, along with room to carry a short grip arm for each.

Each bag containing two stands with grip heads weighs 23 pounds. I pack four of these stands in two Sachtler bags, which is plenty of stands for most of the jobs I roll out on.

The Kupo medium baby stands are perfect for supporting the Aputure lights, and much more. Adding 20″ grip heads, these stands accomplish 90 percent of what a traditional c-stand can do, while weighing about half as much. They even have a leveling leg – something none of my c-stands has. All for a price of about $100 each. Kudos to Kupo.

Bright but loud…

One thing to note about the Aputure COB 300D: the fans are loud. You really need to get the power supply away from the lamp head if you’re going to be rolling sound. They come in the kit with a 6-foot 4-pin xlr power cable, which is very high quality, but it’s just not long enough. I don’t plan to purchase these lights – they are super cheap to rent and readily available. And six months from now, there’s apt to be something brighter and better, the way led lighting is changing these days. But because I will be renting them so much, I do require a longer cable to power them, to allow placing that noisy power supply in a corner away from the filming area.

…So make your own cable

I found a custom cable maker, Show Me Cables, where I was able to built custom 30′ cables for $61 a pop. I purchased two of them, with the following specs:

Connector A

• XLR 4 Pin Male

Connector A Label

• 4-pin XLR male

Cable Type

• 4 Conductor Cable

Cable Length

• 30 ft

Connector B

• XLR 4 Pin Male

Connector B Label

• 4-pin XLR male

In the comments field, you should specify “straight pinout.”

 

 

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