PD 170 battery's/lux

[Stephen Jones]

We are about to purchase three new pd170's. Can anyone give me some feedback on aftermarket batteries and chargers,(on board and block/belt) negative and positive experiences, and battery stock numbers. Also, my research indicates that the PD 170 is rated at 1 lux. Anyone know if that is at 0db gain, or has that spec been fudged at minus 3, 6, 9, 18? db gain.

BTW. I never thought this would happen. I sold my Arri super 16 package and went full dv. Who'da thunk it?

Stephen Jones

"Now I never turn the camera off."

[Mike Rehmus]

I do believe that is at full gain. The noise level at full gain is very low. Much better than my PD150.

I personally prefer to stick with Sony batteries and chargers.

I have a couple of the Sony 3-bay chargers, The AC-V900, that they made for the DSR-200 that work very well.

I don't know if those are still made or not.

The Sony AC-VQ850 works very well and will charge the L & M sized batteries. It has a LCD readout that tells you time to full-charge, current battery life at the current charge level and will also power up the camera if you have one of the adapter cords.

Furthermore, it will accept DC power from 12 to 24 Volts if you need to operate in a car.

Beyond that, you can find my evaluation of a dual-bay charger that is sold to handle a wide range of LION batteries. It comes with mutiple trays but handles the Sony L & M batteries in it's native tray. It too will run on DC power.

To use a belt, you might have to build your own adapter cord although with the 4+ hour run-time on the largest camera batteries, I've never even thought about building one.

The problem with off-camera batteries is that the camera may still require an InfoLithium in the socket.

[Stephen Jones]

Thanks Mike. that give me a good strting point.