Weekly Flying with XDHD cam

[John M. McCloskey]

Moving from the HVRZ1U to the XDHDCam makes great sense but I am worried about the battery situation with flying every week for months in a row. With the small L type batteries of the Z1U you can get away with bringing 3 of them which last way longer than the IDX type L-Ion we would be using with the XDHD cam. What are those of you doing that travel every week to remote locations doing concerning battery power. I just dont see 3 IDX L-ion batteries getting the job done when you need one to run a camera light and one to run the camera and one spare. Shooting an average of 12 hours a day of footage on 3 HVRZ1U batteries is pushing the envelope and know 3 IDX L-ion batteries are not going to make it for that amount of time. I know people are Fed-Xing batteries to there locations and then Fed-Xing them back home when finished but surely there is either a better longer lasting battery or an easier more economical way then mailing your batteries. Would hate to buy new IDX batteries since we have dozens of them. Any suggestions.

[John M. McCloskey]

Did a little digging today concerning my thoughts on IDX L-Ion batteries and found out those batteries are not over 8 grams of Lithium content so In a carry on bag I could attach 1 battery and also bring as many 8 gram or under batteries as I would need (no limit) but could only bring 2 batteries with gram counts over 25 grams. Was surprised to see this new info, it seems they must have done some revisions to the law in the last few months.

[Alister Chapman]

There's very few Li-ion batteries with over 25 grams of Lithium. I regularly fly (US and Europe) with 3 DSM 98 W/hr batts in my carry-on. These give me about 2.5 hours of continuous use each which I find is enough for an average days shoot. I also pack a swit dual channel charger so I can re-charge 2 batts at a time.