220 to 110 volts

[Terence Bradley]

Hi I am travelling to Cuba from UK with my Canon XL1s in April. I have a the standard Canon CA - 910B power unit which says its 110-240v do I need to take a transformer with me?

[Christopher Young]

Short simple answer, no. You will find your 110-240v 50/60Hz power adapter charger kit will work fine in any 110-120v 60Hz country.

One tip though. If shooting PAL frequency footage, ie which is 50 Hz, 25fps 50i, in a 60 Hz country you will get strobing effects when shooting in or around artificial lighting. For example, if your camera is running 25fps 50i you will get a 10Hz offset flicker due to the fact that that any mains lighting will be running at 60Hz whilst your camera is running at 50Hz. This annoying 10Hz offset flicker can be eliminated by setting your camera shutter speed up to a 60th of a second to sync it with the mains frequency. Obviously this only applies where artificial light sources are visible in shot or when shooting indoors using artificial lighting. Good luck

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Terrance,

No, the Canon Battery Charger will accept the higher voltages, you just need to obtain the proper plug adapters.

Here is a very nice reference for the type of electrical receptacles used throughout the world.

Electrical Receptacles, Electrical Outlets, Electrical Plugs, Adapter Plugs

[Warren Kawamoto]

Off topic, just out of curiosity, is there an advantage or disadvantage of a 240v system vs 120v? Would a higher voltage system draw less amps, meaning that system would be safer? Or is 120v easier to produce than 240v?

[Dan Keaton]

Dear Warren,

The current draw is less at 240 (or 220) Volts versus 110 volts.

From a purely technical or medical point of view, lower voltages are always safer, if you come in touch with the voltages.

From a product design standpoint, both are designed to be safe.

The current draw for a charger is so low it does not matter.

[Philip Howells]

In industrial plants in the UK you'll often find 110v supply for hand tools etc - simply because the health hazard is lower. C-form outlets carrying 100V are yellow, those handling 240V are blue. We occasionally needed three-phase (potentially 440V) for lighting big shows and I seem to recall the C-forms for that were red but I could be wrong. At that level we carried our own sparks who took care of all that. For your charger this is academic but it might matter if you were bringing lights etc.

[Allan Black]

Going to Cuba take a medium size Maglite + batteries for each person in your party.

Even in Habana you'll get power outs .. before retiring in each hotel do what firemen do .. walk the hotel and memorise your fire escape. Take US and European AC wall adaptors.

Calculate how much tape you need to take then double it .. in Cuba it's either non existant or fake.

It's a wonderful country and it's great to go there before the Castro Bros leave the scene and McDonalds and Pizza Hut take over.

Cheers.

[George Taylor]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

Short simple answer, no. You will find your 110-240v 50/60Hz power adapter charger kit will work fine in any 110-120v 60Hz country.

One tip though. If shooting PAL frequency footage, ie which is 50 Hz, 25fps 50i, in a 60 Hz country you will get strobing effects when shooting in or around artificial lighting. For example, if your camera is running 25fps 50i you will get a 10Hz offset flicker due to the fact that that any mains lighting will be running at 60Hz whilst your camera is running at 50Hz. This annoying 10Hz offset flicker can be eliminated by setting your camera shutter speed up to a 60th of a second to sync it with the mains frequency. Obviously this only applies where artificial light sources are visible in shot or when shooting indoors using artificial lighting. Good luck

Question: Conversely, when in Chad (220v 50Hz) would I set my American camcorder down to 1/50th second in artificial light sources?

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Philip Howells

In industrial plants in the UK you'll often find 110v supply for hand tools etc - simply because the health hazard is lower.

You also get 110V on construction sites in the UK.

[Pete Bauer]

Originally Posted by George Taylor

Question: Conversely, when in Chad (220v 50Hz) would I set my American camcorder down to 1/50th second in artificial light sources?

Yes, when under fluoros and other types of lights that rapidly vary their output brightness with the AC voltage supply, a video camera's shutter speed always has to take into account the power supply frequency.

[George Taylor]

Thanks, Pete. That's good to know, since I will be there for six weeks and probably wouldn't have been able to figure out how to fix the problem given no Internet access.

I'm beginning to realize, as I enter the realm of videography, how technologically more complex it is over digital photography!

[Nigel Barker]

110V may be safer than 220V but you need much thicker cables to carry the same power.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Warren Kawamoto

Off topic, just out of curiosity, is there an advantage or disadvantage of a 240v system vs 120v? Would a higher voltage system draw less amps, meaning that system would be safer? Or is 120v easier to produce than 240v?

Advantage of 220 volt is that for a given power rating, the current is lower. That makes appliances like electric kettles etc far more feasible in the 220 volt world than 110 volt. For 3 kW, the current is about 13amps - which is what UK sockets are rated for. To get 3kW on a 110 volt system would mean about 26-27 amps (and very thick cables!) or a far longer boiling time. Yes, 110 volt should be safer - but in homes the regs now normally specify RCD etc type cutouts in new installations, and typically floating earth supplies for such as shaver sockets in bathrooms.

Transmission losses are likely to be greater with 110 volt systems as well.

I believe in some places in countries which are normally 110 volt, there are sometimes dual 110/240 volt supplies - the 240 volt to power high power equipment such as air conditioning etc. Generally it's felt that dual voltage supplies in normal premises are not a good idea - hence a preference for 220 volt only.

And 110 volt equipment does get used on building sites for safety - but that's largely because of the far greater risk of damage to equipment and cables in such locations. In such locations special rules are liable to be in force anyway to minimise the dual voltage aspect.

[Chris Soucy]

Actually, the reason for 110 volts systems on building sites is a little more complicated.

At the generating station, the "gensets" as they are called, produce 3 phases of AC which are referenced to a Neutral line.

That Neutral line is tied to Earth, meaning that between any of the phases and Earth there exists a 220 - 240 volt potential (in 220 - 240 volt systems).

On a building site, that means that contacting any live phase and earth (which is pretty well anything on site) is likely to be lethal.

To eliminate that possibilty, the 220 - 240 is fed to an isolation tranformer which does two things:

It transforms it down to 110 volts AC and feeds it to distribution boxes which will only accept specialised plugs fitted to industrial equipment.

Secondly, and more importantly, the output of the isolation transformer is NOT tied to earth, so, in effect, either output wire touching an earthed body will not pass any current. Current can only flow beween the two output wires.

Result? In order to get electrocuted you'd need to be contacting (like, holding one in each hand!) both wires in the circuit at the same time, very difficult to arrange.


CS

[Steve Game]

Originally Posted by David Heath

Advantage of 220 volt is that for a given power rating, the current is lower. That makes appliances like electric kettles etc far more feasible in the 220 volt world than 110 volt. For 3 kW, the current is about 13amps - which is what UK sockets are rated for. To get 3kW on a 110 volt system would mean about 26-27 amps (and very thick cables!) or a far longer boiling time. Yes, 110 volt should be safer - but in homes the regs now normally specify RCD etc type cutouts in new installations, and typically floating earth supplies for such as shaver sockets in bathrooms.

Transmission losses are likely to be greater with 110 volt systems as well.

With the current (probably permanent) increases in the cost of copper, there may be a case for 230V systems to be extended. Maintaining adequate insulation and earth leakage protection is far easier and cheaper than investing in thick copper cables. The hotter the climate, the worse the resistive losses from distribution cables. Additionally, current protection systems, (fuses and circuit breakers) need low source impedance (for a high prospective short circuit current) to operate reliably. This is much more difficult to achieve when the normal load current is doubled.

Originally Posted by David Heath

I believe in some places in countries which are normally 110 volt, there are sometimes dual 110/240 volt supplies - the 240 volt to power high power equipment such as air conditioning etc. Generally it's felt that dual voltage supplies in normal premises are not a good idea - hence a preference for 220 volt only.

One way may be to supply 3 phase supplies to larger 115v domestic premises. Then large loads, (fixed heating, cooling and cooking equipment) can be fed with phase to phase voltages which on a 115v system is 115 x SQRT 3 = approx 199v. This would reduce line currents for large loads by over 40%.

Steve