Power, power, power. You always need to make sure you have enough power and batteries whilst shooting.
Smaller cameras have smaller batteries, which don’t last very long, and you need to have lots of them when shooting all day.
This is why we use NPF batteries to power our cameras, as they give you hours of battery life. The problem is the NPF batteries don’t fit into our cameras.
Blind Spot has sent over their Power Junkie to solve this problem.
The power junkie is a battery plate that allows you to power filmmaking equipment via NPF batteries. You can do this either via the 2 USB ports or a DC output.
With the DC output, you can plug a dummy battery into the Power Junkie and power your camera.
You can get dummy batteries for all types of camera, so just find the one that fits your camera.
You can also get them from Blind Spot when you buy a Power Junkie. You can find links in the description below to all of the products.
We use a Sony A7s Mark 1, and with an NPF 750 battery, we get around 5 times more power than we would if we used a Sony A7s battery.
The USB ports work like any USB port. They can be used to power cameras like a GoPro without a dummy battery, LED lights that take USB power, and also audio recorders like the Tascam DR-70d.
What's also good about it is that you can charge your phone with the NPF batteries. A simple thing, but super useful. I’ve been able to charge my phone 3 times with a single NPF 750 battery.
When you are not powering filmmaking equipment you can also use the Power Junkie to charge the NPF batteries, via USB type C or Micro USB. Again, this is super convenient when you are charging all of your NPF batteries for the next shoot.
The Power Junkie is made out of plastic, but it is super tough and it’s not going to break easily.
There is a battery indicator on the side which shows how much power you have left.
We’ve had a battery in there for over a week, and the indicator lights have not reduced the power of the battery.
To mount the power junkie on to your camera there is a quarter 20 thread and a cold shoe attachment on the bottom. In the box, Blind Spot provides a couple of different screws to help secure it onto your cameras cold show or cage.
The base of the power junkie is rubber so you can get the screw super tight.
The way we have been mounting ours is by using this 15mm rod cheese plate we had going spare. It screws on to the bottom of the power Junkie, then you can mount it on to a 15mm rod.
Both of our cages for the Sony A7s mark 1 have a 15mm rod mount built onto the cage.
Once you have mounted it onto your camera, you can plug in your dummy battery and feed the wire to the power junkie. We taped it up so it doesn’t move around.
Then you are ready to use it to shoot.
We did create a video a while back about our DIY external battery setup, which has been working, but was velcroed on to a cheese plate. The DIY battery plate was only around $10, with the dummy costing around about $15.
So the DIY solution was cheaper, but sometimes the power drops and you have to wiggle the battery and wires to get it working again.
Now I have used the Power Junkie, I wouldn’t recommend building your own DIY version. The Power Junkie can do a lot more than the DIY version can and just works straight out of the box.
With the power junkie, you don’t need to rely on lots of different power sources. You can invest in buying lots of NPF batteries for all your power needs when you have the Power Junkie.
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