I have a bescor VS100 light, with a big 12v old brick battery, that comes with a car lighter style adapter for converting the light to 12v. What I'm wondering is, could I plug, say, a production monitor into the adapter and run it off the battery? Or my camera? For how long?

Using the light, the battery runs for 80 minutes using a 50w bulb, and 35 minutes using a 100w bulb.

If you have a prod monitor with 12 VDC in and a power cable it will run a monitor. I think the monitor connections are 4 pin XLR so an adapter will be required.

I don't understand--the light has an AC plug that plugs into the cigarette adapter. Couldn't I just plug the AC plug from my monitor into the cigarette adapter?

The light is supposed to be both AC and DC, you have to use a different bulb for AC, but you can plug it into a wall. B&H neglected to tell me that. For some reason, in their catalogue, they have a vs100 and a VS100AC listed, and apparently they're both the same damned light!

Josh
But one comes with an adapter and a DC bulb?

I have a production monitor with DC in and it's by 4 pin XLR. There's a big difference between a monitor and a light.With a light you just cahnge the bulb. A monitor would have to have two different power supplies.

The 120 AC volt feed is rectified (turned into a DC voltage) and the battery pack is a much lower DC voltage . Each input would have to be treated very differently.

When in doubt
RTFM

Well, I looked on the back, and unless I'm missing something, no DC in.

There's an input marked "remote"--it's a circular depression in the back with a whole bunch of pins, couldn't tell you how many. I don't suppose this is the same thing?

It'd be real nice to power this without plugging it in.

Josh:

It would probably be helpful to post the brand/model number of the monitor to determine for sure if it doesn't accept DC.

If it is truly an AC only monitor, your best hope is to purchase an inverter (Radio Shack has them) that will have a cigarette lighter plug and allow you to plug in an AC component.

Sony PVM 142MU is the model. That's what I was saying--don't I already have that inverter thing?

The light came with an adapter, one side is for AC in, the other goes into the cigarette lighter female attachment to the battery.

Sorry if I'm thick about this stuff--I know nothing about electronics. I'm just a caveman, your flashing beeping devices frighten and confuse me.

Josh, I looked up the light and only found pictures, not much in the way of explanations. That's an odd setup. The adaptor looks too small to be an inverter, it must just pass the DC through the plug--the only thing that perplexes me is that it must observe the correct power polarity for DC, or it will blow up the bulb. I'm assuming then that you can only plug into the adaptor one way (because the two prongs are different sizes??)

Also, I'm wondering about what happens if you plug the unit into the wall with the DC bulb in place...

Strange indeed.

They said it'll explode. I have an AC bulb for plugging it into the wall.

The battery's a 12v battery, if that's what you mean by correct polarity. Anyway, I'm just trying to see if there's a way to make this work, without buying a generator. It's not why I bought the monitor (outdoor use) but I like having more than just my viewfinder to go by when outdoors, and I have a shoot on Tuesday where it would come in handy.