portable power - recomendation for AC type battery pack with studio strobes

[kiwiphotography]

Hello,

I have some old norman packs p800 and p2000 and I want to be able to use the packs/strobes outdoors.

I was going to buy alien bees or similar to use on location because of the affordable vagabond power pack.

I realized though, that I could prob just use the vagabond power pack with my p800 power pack as it is a simple plug type socket and I could use my current norman heads and and not have to buy new alien bees.

I then started realizing that I could prob buy any number of AC battery packs that offer an AC type plug...maybe even going to home depot and seeing if they have anything.

Can anyone offer any advice on this? I'm sure that there are specific things that I need to look for in order to preventing a short or something; but compared to buying a Norman 200W battery pack for $800 or buying a new Alien Bees System it seems a cheap way to get myself portable and able to use 800 WS of power.

At the moment, the Vagabond system for $230 seems to be the best system in terms of portability; but if I am going to attach that to a powerpack anyways, I might as well look into the possibility of getting an even larger battery.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

M

[JWurst]

Power packs consist of a battery bundled with a power inverter. You can even build your own if you want. There are two things you need to watch out for.

1)Inverters have a limit to how much power they can move. If you overload them then they will either blow a fuse or shut themselves down until they cool off. Lights don't pull a huge amount of power in total if you keep the modeling lights off, but when they do pull power during the recycle phase they do suck a lot at once.
2) The other issue is that some lights require the AC waveform to be sinusoidal. My understanding is that the Alien Bees are that way. If you put them on a power pack that has a square waveform then they can be damaged. I don't know if your Normans are that way or not. Cheaper inverters tend to have a square waveform. The Vagabond does deliver a sine waveform, of course, since the AB's need it.

[kiwiphotography]

Thanks for the response...makes a lot more sense now!

So if I have a 800w and a 2000w norman pack and I hook up the vagabond mini to it, would the size of the battery only effect how many pops I got from each of the packs.

I was wondering if you needed a bigger (capacity wise) battery for bigger packs or if the capacity of the battery did not really matter on operating a device....you would just get less from the battery using more wattage.

Is there any specification that I should look for which would dictate that the vagabond would be able to operate the 800 but the 2000 might be too much wattage?
thanks,
M

[AstroImager]

Power packs consist of a battery bundled with a power inverter. You can even build your own if you want. There are two things you need to watch out for.

1)Inverters have a limit to how much power they can move. If you overload them then they will either blow a fuse or shut themselves down until they cool off. Lights don't pull a huge amount of power in total if you keep the modeling lights off, but when they do pull power during the recycle phase they do suck a lot at once.
2) The other issue is that some lights require the AC waveform to be sinusoidal. My understanding is that the Alien Bees are that way. If you put them on a power pack that has a square waveform then they can be damaged. I don't know if your Normans are that way or not. Cheaper inverters tend to have a square waveform. The Vagabond does deliver a sine waveform, of course, since the AB's need it.

The ABs don't 'need' a pure sine wave inverter. I've been using an inexpensive black & decker 800w unit with mine for years. No problems whatsoever. A 115 amp-hour deep cycle battery from Walmart ($55) and the inverter ($30) and I get 5 times the output of a Vagabond for a LOT less :-)
Paul

[JWurst]

The ABs don't 'need' a pure sine wave inverter. I've been using an inexpensive black & decker 800w unit with mine for years. No problems whatsoever. A 115 amp-hour deep cycle battery from Walmart ($55) and the inverter ($30) and I get 5 times the output of a Vagabond for a LOT less :-)
Paul

That's news to me, happy news. I've read all over the place that these require a pure sine wave. Maybe Paul C Buff is just being careful and people don't like to risk a test. What inverter are you using and how many lights (and how big) are you running from it? Maybe I have the stuff available to run my AB's in the field already. Though I'm still nervous about breaking them with my $30 inverter, a Schumacher 410w unit.

[AstroImager]

They don't make the one I use any more, but here is the current equivalent:
http://www.blackanddecker.com/power-tools/PI800BB.aspx

You can get it retail for much less than $117 :-)
I run 2 AB 400s from it with no problems.
I read that the ABs needed 'pure' sine wave inverters too - then I broke the flange on the power cord input on one of mine, had to open it to fix it, and noticed it had a full bridge rectifier on the ac input lines...which means it doesn't need anything close to a pure sine wave. Tried it, it works great, and I didn't look back :-)
Paul

[kiwiphotography]

wow...so you think that AB just says it needs a pure sine wave, so that people do not go out and buy the cheaper yet comparable no photography brands like black and decker?

So with that inverter though, you would still need to either hook it to your car battery or buy a generator to go along with it?

[AstroImager]

It needs to be hooked up to a 12v substantial battery, but it doesn't have to be your car battery. I use a 12v deep-cycle marine battery (115 amp-hour' $55 at Walmart) that I put in a $7 plastic cooler. I mounted the inverter to the cooler and it's a self-contained portable unit. Somewhere here on the forum there are photos of it...I will see if I can find the post :-)
Paul

[kiwiphotography]

That sounds amazing. Yeah, would love to see it if you can come up with the link.

Is there another product on the market now that you can compare the power to? Would it be comparable to the vagator mini or to say the invotronix more powerful packs in terms of recycle time and length of battery use.

Really cool idea!

[AstroImager]

Well, I can't find the post, but I found the images of it on my web site




That image has the slightly older 400-watt inverter that I used for about two years, then I replaced it with an 800-watt version.
The 115 amp-hour deep-cycle marine battery is inside the cooler.

Paul