Blackmagic Forum

Annoying day. I drove a hour to do some wildlife shooting and testing with my new ursa G2. Got all set up. Switched on the camera and the battery was dead. No problem, right, I have a spare. Slap it on and it's dead too. Both had been charged within the last two weeks. What's the issue? Bad battery. My misuse? Ideas?

I saved the day, sort of, by shooting with my Nikon D850 but lost of day of testing.

When you are not using the URSA Mini cameras, you should remove the battery from the camera. With the battery on the camera there is some trickle consumption of power. And don’t remount the battery to the camera until setting up the camera for the shoot.

I don’t know which battery you are using but the Cinegears 250 Wh battery I use retains its charge quite well when removed from the camera. I still top up all batteries the day of a shoot.

Not just URSA Mini cameras, every professional camera. Always take the battery off when not shooting.

Thanks for this. Yup - sure enough. The battery went from 16.5 volts to 16 in 15 hours. I am using a Canadian sourced battery - SHAPE. Do you know them Rick?

I second the recommendation to remove the battery when not using the camera, this goes for all pro cameras including the new Pocket 4/6K Cameras. Also you should plan to charge up your batteries before any shoot, especially if they have been sitting for more than a few days. All batteries will slowly discharge sitting on a shelf.

The best camera 14VDC batteries for holding a charge I have found, are the IDX batteries, they have kept a better shelf charge than my Sony Vs and Anton Bauer Gold mounts, which came in second.

If you are interested, I have two new boxed, (One slightly used to test) open box Anton Bauer Gold Mount Digital Series 90 batteries and a new open box BMD Ursa Mini Gold Mount Battery plate to go with them, which are yours for CAD $325 plus CAD $25 for shipping from Calif. Send me a PM if you are interested, I can send you a photo.
Cheers

Overlander wrote:Thanks for this. Yup - sure enough. The battery went from 16.5 volts to 16 in 15 hours. I am using a Canadian sourced battery - SHAPE. Do you know them Rick?

Yes, I know Shape. I bought most of the rig for my BMPCC4K including cage, quick release baseplate, swiveling top handle, custom wooden handle. But my large Cinegears battery was from another vendor whose office is very close to Cinegears Canada. I’ll stay with Cinegears in part because they are built like a battleship—take a beating and keep on ticking.

Thanks for the tips. Normally I leave batteries in on my DSLRs so I will retrain myself. Rick, I will check out out Cinegear. I see they have an outlet in Richmond. I am normally in Kamloops but visit Vancouver often. They seem to have the same charger as SHAPE and batteries look very similar. I'll see how this sorts out before buying new or more batteries. These 96w usually give me 3 hours each but I wouldn't mind having at least one large one around 250w.

You can see the detailed specs of the Cinegears on their website if that helps you to compare to the Shape. My Cinegears doesn’t have any of the fancy modern features, just the four status lights, but handles the long shoots.

Internal resistance in battery cells consumes power. Protection chips, voltage meters and balance resistors inside battery packs circuits consumes power. Timecode clock generators and other circuits in cameras and monitors that usually always partially in standby mode to provide faster camera boot time consumes power. So any battery always slowly discharges even not in use.

My general tipp for storing any lithium based battery (lithium ion or lithium polymer) would be to never store them completly full or empty. The chemistry inside those batteries is most "stressed" when holding maximum voltage and beeing like this will degrade the maximum capacity of those cells over time. That's why you shouldn't leave your laptop or phone plugged in and at 100% battery for a long time, it slowly degrades the battery.

I'm doing fpv flying as a hobby and I'll only charge my LiPo batteries directly before flying and I'll use a special storage program on my charger if I leave them on the shelf for a couple of days or weeks. For reference: A Li-Po cell is considered full, once it reaches 4,2 volts, it's considered empty once it dips down to 3,7 volts sustained, not under load (you can go lower under load, not go under 3,3 and after recovering it should be back up to 3,7). My charger considers 3,8 volts per cell a "storage charge".

Applying these principles to my V-mount, Sony BP-U and Canon batteries, I rarely charge them after using them and will just leave them at 1-2 out of 4 or 5 battery bars for storage. Not completly empty but definitly not fully charged. Then the day before my next shoot or prepday I'll charge them all up. I know this is not really as convenient as having them charged on the shelf but they will thank you this in how long you are gonna be able to use them at their max potential. If you are using them in 2 or 3 days anyway, go ahead, charge them fully. I'm from Germany, winter time is usually pretty slow as far as work goes for me, so I'll make sure are not full when sitting on the shelf for 3 weeks.
And a last thing: DJI batteries have a setting that allows them to slowly discharge over time after a certain day threshold. Maybe your batteries have a similiar protection built in.

Thanks for reading my battery health and safety guide