No Mac, No Cheese - Episode 10: Vivitars and Battery Packs

How to make your own 6v battery pack for the vivitar 285HV

Category:

Education

Tags:

• digital
• photography
• how-to
• DIY
• battery
• pack
• 6v

[rmstudio]

P.S. I have to say this is one of the more experienced and knowledgeable youtubers on here about photo stuff.. So many many times you see the "Blind newbie amateur Leading the blind" in giving advice here on youtube. This one is not the case and well done. And I love the old solder that makes the Tuxedo battery pack.. He is no nonsense kinda guy that "Actually knows" what he is talking about and is a honest joe not trying to make a million off others. Unlike idiots like "Gary Bald Fongy" is..

[rmstudio]

As a testimate to what this guy has said about the 285 flash its very true.. I have had 2 of these guys for literally 17 years of "Continous" hard commercial use as a full time working commercial photog and they are still going strong! I even had one ran over by a limo and it still works. Granted I do have the "Pros" know this old company "Hollywood" made "Solid Metal" HS foot on them. The best part is the hotshoe is not like the 580 or sb800 they have 1 single connection on the bottom.

[akfotoguy]

in theory you are correct, but as is the norm with science, in practical use the theory doesn't hold up. build two units and test for yourself, the sal's are superior for this application although a bit more bulky

[akfotoguy]

he says how in the video

[svacoma]

Hi i use these battery pack too its good fast recycle time

[ShutterflyKisses]

Hey Shan, I did something very much like this with a 6V lamp battery that I got for $3.00. I just used gater clips to hook up to the terminal and my Sunpak flash works perfectly on it! I'm going to look for a Lead Acid battery but for now the Lamp battery works very very well and my whole set up cost less then $10.00, so I'm happy about that. Thanks for this video!!!

[pedraopy]

Very interesting, now, how do you recharge the universal external battery?

[edgarbarradaskate]

i have a question can i use this for my canon 580 EX II

[darronbirg]

The 6V lead acid batt wins in a race with the AA Ni-MH cells when recharging the flash.

This is because of it's lower internal resistance, which allows a higher discharge current under the heavy load of flash capacitor charging.

[darronbirg]

Good video. You've got the battery rating thing a bit wrong, though.

Lead Acid batteries (like your 6V, 4.5 amp-hour example) are capacity rated at C/20, or a 20 hour discharge. They will have MUCH less capacity than rated when discharged at high rate, such as in your flash application. This is due to Peukert's law.

A Ni-MH AA cell is capacity rated at C/5 (5 hour discharge). They will lose less of their rated capacity at flash discharge rates.