Charging GFX during hikes

[anyone]

Hi there,
since we have a couple of people going for multi-day-hikes with their GFX systems I'd like to ask how you approach the battery issue.

There are I guess more or less three options:

• Carry more batteries. My rule of thumb for this is 2 batteries for three days of moderate shooting with the GFX100s.
• Solar charging (battery charger / power bank)
• Direct usb-c charging from power bank.

How do you handle it? Which equipment do yo use? Needless to say I'm looking for a practical and lightweight solution.

Thank you!

 

[Ben730]

I always carry batteries when I'm on a trip.
With batteries I know alway how much energy I have used and how much I have in stock.
A power bank or solar charging is not predictable, you can have cable issues and you have to care on it.
Regards,
Ben

 

[sbjornda]

Solar charging can work under some circumstances, but there are several issues to be aware of that might make it impractical. Cloud cover drastically reduces performance. If you are camping in a forested area it may be impossible to find a spot that gets hit by the sun all day. If you're hiking during the day, is your solar cell sitting unsupervised back at the campsite, vulnerable to theft but also with no one around to shift it into sunny areas as the day progresses? Attaching a charger to your backpack to charge while hiking seems good at first but you will not have many hours when the panel faces the sun in an optimal direction to generate power so the extra weight probably won't pay off.

Solar may be worth an experiment to see if it works under your particular circumstances, but I wouldn't depend on it as the primary power source. If you can count on sunny days and someone to move the panel out of the shade every hour or so, it might work just fine. But if you can't avoid cloud and/or shade, your power output will be cut by a lot.

 

[rdeloe]

I have the Fujifilm dual charger BC-W235. I just plugged it into a Charmast W1052 power pack (10400 mAh). The Fujifilm dual charger seems happy enough and is charging a battery.

A good powerpack is heavy. Mine weighs 192 grams. I haven't tested how many GFX 100S batteries I can charge, but I do know it can do my cell phone a couple times.

 

[dchew]

For landscape photography and backpacking, my rule has always been 1 battery per day. That's worked for me as far back as my conversion to digital in 2006. Canon 5d's, Sony a7r's, Phase One IQ's, GFX and iPhone. That is conservative, and frankly you are probably more accurate depending on how cold it gets. At that rate, I find it difficult to justify carrying charging equipment. I don't think charging one battery with another battery will never be as weight-efficient as just bringing extra batteries for that specific device.

Although I haven't checked in a few years, the weight of carrying solar charging equipment was not less than the number of batteries I need to carry for up to 4-nights, 5-days. According to Amazon, the GFX battery NP-W235 weighs 91 grams x (5) = 455 grams. I wouldn't want to carry less than two in case one gets dropped or fails, so that leaves 273 grams I could dedicate to charging equipment vs those extra batteries. Your 2/3 [bat/day] decreases that to a total of (4) batteries, so the two extra would only be 182 grams. Difficult to justify field charging for that weight plus the space, logistics and trouble.

Dave

 

[MGrayson]

For landscape photography and backpacking, my rule has always been 1 battery per day. That's worked for me as far back as my conversion to digital in 2006. Canon 5d's, Sony a7r's, Phase One IQ's, GFX and iPhone. That is conservative, and frankly you are probably more accurate depending on how cold it gets. At that rate, I find it difficult to justify carrying charging equipment. I don't think charging one battery with another battery will never be as weight-efficient as just bringing extra batteries for that specific device.

Although I haven't checked in a few years, the weight of carrying solar charging equipment was not less than the number of batteries I need to carry for up to 4-nights, 5-days. According to Amazon, the GFX battery NP-W235 weighs 91 grams x (5) = 455 grams. I wouldn't want to carry less than two in case one gets dropped or fails, so that leaves 273 grams I could dedicate to charging equipment vs those extra batteries. Your 2/3 [bat/day] decreases that to a total of (4) batteries, so the two extra would only be 182 grams. Difficult to justify field charging for that weight plus the space, logistics and trouble.

Dave

The only way I managed to use only one battery per day on Sony or Phase One equipment was to leave the camera off with the battery removed. With the Sony (A7II), the battery percentage remaining looked like a countdown timer. Phase One IQ160 was two full batteries per day.

Matt

 

[rdeloe]

If I'm going out for a day of shooting with a GFX 100S, I'm carrying three batteries (one in the camera, two in the bag), and I'm using one of the spare batteries, and occasionally both. This is a 'working' situation, where I'm actively looking for scenes, working scenes, etc., for the whole time I'm out On a trip where I had no particular intention of making a photograph, one a day would be fine.

 

[Ed Hurst]

I use an Anker PowerCore+ 26800mAh and I find it more than adequate even for my fairly extreme use case (allowing me to do multiple star trails images without having access to mains power - requiring the ability to run the camera off it continuously for the equivalent of 24+ hours and/or charging the camera battery several times from one charge of the powerbank - and also recharging my phone and head torch simultaneously with the above). Not light but strongly recommended and robust too! I also carry around a very long USB-C cable (more than 2 metres long) so that I can run the camera off the powerbank while having it mounted atop an absurdly tall tripod.

 

[lookbook]

... the royal road is a powerpack with the possibility to charge batteries on the way in the backpack, while you take pictures with the second battery.
the charging process is also faster than on the mains!

 

[Ed Hurst]

Since my star trails are shot for a longer period than the camera can run from its fully charged battery, my only option is to run the camera plugged into the powerbank. Then I leave it that way after I'm done and the camera is switched off, so it charges the camera battery at that stage (leaving it in a good state for other shots as I go about my business). Although I recognise that my use case is eccentrically extreme, the main point is that a chunky powerbank is a solid and flexible solution!

 

[anwarp]

Barring Ed’s star trail use case, it should be more efficient to carry as many batteries as you need, instead of battery based chargers.
The power conversion inside the power pack to USB compliant voltage and another conversion from that to the battery charging voltage incur some losses.

 

[lookbook]

... mobile phone can also be charged with it - possibly also important on a longer tour!

 

[Ed Hurst]

Not to mention other things like head torch, etc..

 

[Bill Caulfeild-Browne]

A few years ago I took a rafting trip down the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories. We were out of touch with any electricity for two weeks. I carried a solar charger and it worked very well. Of course, the NWT is way north, so the sun barely sets in June! I'd do it all again except my ancient bones aren't that happy in a tiny tent pitched on hard ground any more.

 

[Adam Schallau]

I've done several 10-day and 18-day rafting trips on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. I recommend to my workshop clients on these trips to plan on using a battery a day. Several of my clients have tried to use solar chargers to charge their camera batteries but with mixed success. I'd love for solar to be an option, but there are too many downsides to using it in the field compared to bringing several camera batteries, including the cost, size, and weight of the solar charging system. Then there's the issue of needing a clear, unobstructed view of the sun.

If you want to charge in the field, then a USB power bank is the most straightforward approach, and as others have already mentioned, it can charge other devices. The big advantage of this approach is that most USB powerbanks are much cheaper than buying several batteries for your camera. The risk in using a power bank is that if it fails for some reason, you will likely no longer have the power needed to keep your camera running.

My approach for many years has been to have lots of batteries as it's easier & simpler to deal with having lots of batteries versus trying to charge in the field, but I have modified my approach a bit since going with the GFX 100S. I take enough batteries to cover 2/3 of the duration of the trip, and I use a USB power bank to recharge my batteries if I need more power. I've been using the Fujifilm BC-W235 dual charger plugged into the power bank, but on my most recent trip, I used some of the SmallRig NP-W235 batteries with a USB-C port for recharging. The SmallRig batteries worked very well and eliminated the need to bring the BC-W235 charger.

 

[anyone]

Thank you for your insights. It seems carrying batteries is the best / safest solution for me at this stage. Although the smallrig batteries with USB charging and a powerbank also sound very good.

To sum up, solar charging doesn't seem to work really in practice for anyone here, but power banks do. For me personally, the decision will be solely based on weight. The lighter, the better ... as some of you may have guessed from the UL medium format thread.

And @Bill Caulfeild-Browne , you'd be surprised how much development went into inflatable mattresses. Last year I switched to a very new therm-a-rest model and have to say it beats my old one easily in terms of size, weight, and comfort.