Power Consumption PD-170
 

How is the power consumption rate on the PD-170?

With the addition of the external mic on the camera, 48v phantom power, I presume it will have a higher usage rate. Does the 10-hour battery last 10 hours? Or at least 5 hours?

I don't have a PD-170, but I can't imagine that the provision of phantom power could be any significant drain on the battery. So little current is drawn by a microphone that I suspect that the other camera features would dominate the power consumption. I'm just guessing, but I would think that the dominant power consumers would be:
1. tape transport
2. head motor
3. LCD screen
4. zoom mechanism
5. audio and video signal processing
6. EVF

I would expect the phantom power to be many times less than any of these elements. So I would expect a PD-170 and a VX-2100 to have very similar characteristics with respect to battery lifetime under the same shooting conditions.

The 960 battery isn't good for 10 hours on any of the genre if that is the battery you are discussing

Phantom power causes negligible power consumption. Understand that the equivalent of phantom power is supplied by the 200/2100. That stereo pair on those cameras are electrets and require power. Power is also supplied to the external microphone socket on the 200/2100.

Now, if you were talking about powering one of those Phantom-powered tube microphones, maybe the consumption would be greater. But it may be that the tube microphones require an unusually high amount of Phantom power and the 150/170 would not supply enough.

Power Consumption
 

I've been using the PD-150 for a couple of years. If just purchased a 170 so I can't tell the differences in power consumpution yet but on the 150:

The 960 seems to last aroun 6 hours or so. Using the LCD eats up about 1 hour of battery time. It seems turning on and off the camera shortens battery life too. These seem to be the two biggest factors on battery life.

I suspect that you can now have both the Viewfinder and the LCD on at the same time might eat up the batter a bit faster on the 170.

Using Zoom eats some power but it's hard to measure how much.

My experience with a pair of 960's on a VX-2000 is that you should be able to get well over 6 hours even with the LCD screen on. I have done this multiple times, LCD was on the whole time, plus rewinding, zooming, etc. Each time the camera was reporting quite a bit of remaining battery capacity after 6 hours. Now as I recall, the VX-2000 uses slightly less power than the PD-150 however. No idea how this translates to the 170 or 2100 though...

Yeah, I have the VX2100. It just occured to me that the PD-170 should consume more power since it has an external microphone to support. Looking to get one.

<<<-- Originally posted by Law Tyler : Yeah, I have the VX2100. It just occured to me that the PD-170 should consume more power since it has an external microphone to support. Looking to get one. -->>>

Nah, the internal microphones on the 2100 have to be powered too. See previous posts.

Something I've always wondered about is the apparently different power consumption of the PD-150 and VX-2000, as indicated here at DVinfo.net and elsewhere. Under "Battery Endurance" using the NPF960 the PD-150 is claimed at 8 hours and the VX-2000 claimed at 9:35. That's quite a large difference, around 20%. Do you suppose this is related to the expected usage patterns on the pro vs. consumer model, or maybe due the the auto power-down on the VX-2000? You wouldn't expect much to be different in terms of the actual hardware.

It could be a number of things I suppose but I'd be surprised if their are any motor or significant circuit differences between the two models.

It could be so simple as how far down the voltage-sensing circuitry is set for the cameras. The PD-170/170 being set higher so as to prevent a decreased performance (in some circuitry) due to low voltage.