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Power the Red in Nepal.Ideas please (Tom Lowe?)

SeanBrown

SeanBrown

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So I am headed to Nepal in March. The crew and I are planning to just shoot with DSLR because of the limited power/no power issues. We are getting sponsorship from Goal Zero Solar chargers and will be headed out with some 350 and 150 batts and a bunch of solar panels. I have 5 Anton Bauger 90 WH batts for my Scarlet. I don't think as of now I can see a way that I can charge these batts and everything else we need to run like dslr,laptops etc with the amount of power the red takes. Anyone have experience with long trips away from power with a red? Tom Lowe?
Thanks for sending the ideas my way.
 
I'm afraid I can't help but I'm hoping to go to Nepal and Bhutan at the end of the year and would dearly love to take the Red so am very interested in the discussion.
 
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Hey Sean, sorry, I don't have specific knowledge or experience with solar chargers yet. Some of the real wildlife shooters here might be able to help you.
 
Hey Sean,

How long will you be away from power?

Here is some anecdotal:
We did an expedition above the arctic circle, super remote & away from power for 8 days. We had access to all of GoalZeros battery and solar options. We ended up not bringing any in and chose to bring 30 DSLR batteries and 20 plus 32GB SD cards for 2 shooters. The goal zeros may have worked for DSLR batteries but it takes forever for the Solar panels to charge the GoalZero battery...and Im sure the a v-mount or AB battery will deplete the batteries super quickly & much faster than the solars ability to recharge. Link to the final edit & a behind-the-scenes video: http://shootcutcreate.com/2011/12/deep-north-a-trip-to-the-arrigetch-peaks/

If you have sherpas and livestock/donkey's to carry gear I would think a small honda generator is your best bet for recharging batteries for the RED. EU1000 or similar.

The power draw of the Epic/Scarlet is a real bummer. I try to keep my camera as small as possible but I'm still bringing 8-10 Redvolts out into fairly remote locations just to shoot for one day!

Sorry if that's not more help, you just have to way the options if it's worth it or even doable to bring a RED into remote locations for an extended period of time. If you have the budget, anything is possible though :)

-dane
 
How about an auto battery to Red Scarlet cable.. Be Very Sure not to screw up to polarity on connecting cable to battery terminals.

that will not be handheld, but it will be long lasting on a charge.

If you are walking, this might not work..
though if you have a deep cycle automotive battery like this one, you may get quite a bit of use out of it before it runs down..

<http://pitstopusa.com/i-5079585-braille-b3121c-racing-battery-carbon-fiber-case.html>

In film camera days, we frequently built rigs with trickle chargers, boat battery boxes and deep cycle 12v and 14v batteries.
It let us go pretty far from power, and many cameras used a lot of amps to turn the film through them..

I even remember chopping a camera power cable open and stripping the wires to hook it up to a battery still installed in a car while trying to get a very rural location sunset shot.. after the onboard batteries had all been run down to nothing that day.. good times...


on the downside, a dressed scarlet will likely weigh less than your low tech dc power supply.
 
here in new york, folks were using the goal zero chargers after hurricane sandy... we considered borrowing one for a project shot in areas with no power... sadly they just take very, very long to charge. and the big ones are not light.

to run DIT and charge batteries is significantly more taxing then just running batteries.

what are you shooting? easiest practice is to perhaps take as many cards as you can to minimize download time. if it's not a feature, is it possible you might shoot conservatively? perhaps see if some friendly rental house might donate an extra 256 for the trip? no laptop to carry means the weight of the DC charging solution you want might actually be feasible.

it's great that goal zero is sponsoring you. but there must be some sort of way to skip around the heavy battery that takes a day to charge--i'm not skilled enough to comment on this, but wiring a portable solar panel through a small DC regulator to charge your batteries directly seems faster and lighter.

Christopher--did you catch that sunset?
 
I've shot in Nepal at Everest base camp, and the looooong walk to get there (in 2008 with 2 HVX200's for a spot that played during the Beijing Olympics) we carried everything in and brought a pile of batteries. Everything was hand carried on the 8 or 9 day walk to camp - but porters are relatively inexpensive to hire to carry all of the batteries / gear, so taking way more bats than necessary was no problem (other than sourcing / renting / buying them beforehand).

There are 'tea houses' along the way, and some have power and are willing to rent you a plug for overnight charging. HOWEVER their access to electricity is limited and they will pull the plug if their lights start to dim. We tried the solar chargers that were available to us at the time, but they were pretty useless: if you are on the move - you can't charge. If you aren't in full sun - you can't charge. This last point was a killer, because in some locations we were in shade most of the day; deep in valleys between the mountains.

I bid another job that will shoot at Everest Base camp in May of this year; as part of my research I spoke with the crew who shot http://www.40daysatbasecamp.com last year, and they pretty much said that they had a similar experience and not much has changed: even with solar advances the chargers couldn't keep up and any shade killed them.

Of course this is a worst place on the planet type experience - for all I know you may be in the tropical south with road access, and the ability to use much larger battery sources.

PM me if you have any questions.
 
Why not just pack in a honda thousand watt inverter generator and a jerry can of gas? the genny weighs 30lbs, will run for 8 hours on a half gallon of gas, and is quiet enough that it wouldn't be horrible to be around (they are used on set all the time while recording sound).

You could break out the gas into 1 gallon containers, 5 gallons would get you 80hrs of electricity for a grand total of 78 lbs of stuff to carry.

Nick
 
A while ago I shot a back country ski/snowboard film in the out back of New Zealand. Its was 7 days solid with no power, but with a road/car access. We used a Sine wave inverter (from memory I think it was this one - http://www.powerbright.com/aps600.html) along with our 4WD's battery. It was a light and elegant solution and it managed to power up a laptop with an off loading station and simultaneously charge Red Volts. It just ate a considerable amount of fuel.. We toyed with the idea of bringing a generator but this was a lighter solution, in case we needed to leave the hut and track/walk.
 
Nick Gardner said:
Why not just pack in a honda thousand watt inverter generator and a jerry can of gas? the genny weighs 30lbs, will run for 8 hours on a half gallon of gas, and is quiet enough that it wouldn't be horrible to be around (they are used on set all the time while recording sound).

You could break out the gas into 1 gallon containers, 5 gallons would get you 80hrs of electricity for a grand total of 78 lbs of stuff to carry.

Nick
Click to expand...



Ethan Knight said:
A while ago I shot a back country ski/snowboard film in the out back of New Zealand. Its was 7 days solid with no power, but with a road/car access. We used a Sine wave inverter (from memory I think it was this one - http://www.powerbright.com/aps600.html) along with our 4WD's battery. It was a light and elegant solution and it managed to power up a laptop with an off loading station and simultaneously charge Red Volts. It just ate a considerable amount of fuel.. We toyed with the idea of bringing a generator but this was a lighter solution, in case we needed to leave the hut and track/walk.
Click to expand...


These are both solutions that would work if Sean is in an area of Nepal with handy (2-3 day walk) road access. But if he's heading into the mountains neither of these may work… We looked at the idea of a small gas generator when we shot there - but we couldn't take the fuel on the plane that took us to the 'Halfway Point'. That meant that any gas had to be carried / walked and would need to leave 7-8 days ahead of the main shooting crew. We also couldn't confirm that a genny of the size & weight that we were looking for could be purchased in Kathmandu when we arrived (everyone there says YES! even if they are looking straight at you and mean NO!). It just turned into a logistical headache.

The added bonus of shooting in the Nepali backcountry is this: If something breaks, you're S.O.L. - even if you send a fast runner to pick up a replacement, he could be gone 8-10 days. I've waited at Lukla (the halfway to Everest) for a week to get a plane out, if the weather closes in everything closes down. Not like here where you can send a P.A. and get full replacement kit in an hour.

For the job I bid on this Spring at Everest - I allowed for enough VMount batts for two Scarllets to run 5 - 8 Hour shoot days then added 10% for error. Built in 5 extra porters to carry it all. Decided that the idea of trying to re-charge and failing was just too great and jeopardized the whole project. It's the kind of place you get one shot, so why not rely on a rock solid solution.
 
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Ryan.. yep.. got the sunset!
And I also remember Aaton having disposable lithium batteries at one point...
perhaps you dont want to discard them, but if you have a fixer on the ground, and lead time.. shipping a charging station and a crate of v-mounts to your last road and air accessible location, and hiring folks to carry the charged v-mounts in... budget a certain amount of time per day to shoot... like filmstock... and either a btach of 48Gb... or smaller amount of large cards.. (I pick lots of small cards for the eggs in one basket risk)...
donwload and recharge when you get back home..
 
I am not sure where you are shooting in Nepal. I have shot a couple of times there up to and including everest base camp. But Power is often not as illusive as you might expect. As in for the most part you can plug in at the end of a day. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call.
 
Hi Sean,

You really need to give us more to go on here. Nepal is not exactly space, so likely if your in any city you'll have power or a lodge with a generator. If you heading into the mountains or deep bush, how are you getting there. If it's just 2-3 out, and then back to town, then just batteries, but get several v-mount travel chargers. They take 110-220 and cost 100$. Make sure you have a few plug converters.

If you have a car, there are several options for charging. Best is a power inverter set up on the car. In our land rover here in Africa we plug a 600w inverter and we have no issues.

Now if you in the bush proper and away from a power source for a number of days, then your screwed unless you take a powerful generator. The small ones will take far too to charge a single battery. Small solar chargers don't work either, you need a 200w panel with full sun to properly charge. Best if it is 2 big panels with a battery system to regulate current.

If you have intermittent access, but have rural camps as I do in the Serengeti, we use the car for most things, and I lug one of these around which is amazing for powering computers etc http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/brow...~0112028P/Eliminator+1000A+700W+Power+Box.jsp The downside is the plug is 110, so you need to find a different power adapter, or use a 220 downconverter to 110. This power box used a sealed lead battery which is ok for planes. Car batts are liquid and not allowed. But you do have to notify the airline with this ahead of time, and arrange that it goes on, because it i considered hazardous.

90% of my shoots are in places with limited or no power. If you have any questions, let me know.
 
Hey All,
Thanks so much for all this info. I have been away from the forms and this form for a bit. So yes we are filming a Doc mostly on DSLR it looks like and I hear the power in the town of Kumari where we will be filming ( 6 hour trek from Katmandu) is scarce to none. It looks like the best bet would be to bring enough DSLR Batts to last the trip and still have the goal Zero power as a super back up. We will try to only use the laptop to offload if we need to and we will have three of them on site as one runs out we can use another. We can't take a genorator with us as we will be all over in the 2nd part of the trek. I will be stationed in Kumari for 14 of the days so might be able to find a power solution there but not sure. At this point I don't think I will take the red as it would be wonderful but he budget won't handle it. Thanks for all your help.
 
Namaste Sean,

I just got back from a aerial high altitude shoot with helicopter around Mt Everest.

Filming there many times since 1987. Nepal is a fantastic place with it's people and great nature.

It's very challenging since things don't work as we are used to.
Things can take 10 time longer if you don't have the right people to guide you
In general there is a lot of problem with Power in Nepal, Power come and goes....
Drop me a mail and tell me what area besides Kumari you will film in.
I can get you in contact with the best people.

cheers Peter
 
Hey Peter,
We will be traveling with porters as the man we are making the film about owns his own trekking guide company and pays them fair wages.
Thanks so much!
 
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