A Simple Power Supply for Your Point and Shoot Camera
Do you need to keep your camera running for several hours (or days) but don’t have access to AC power for you adapter? I ran into this issue while planning a time lapse shoot of a tide cycle on the Maine coast. My shooting location on Friendship Island was over a mile from the nearest wall outlet on the mainland, rendering my AC adapter useless. A tide cycle on the Maine coast (the time the tide to go from full to low) can take from 5 to 7 hours, depending on the phase of the moon and other variables. My Canon SD-750 would burn through it’s internal battery pack in about 3 hours, requiring a battery change, which caused and undesirable break in the time-lapse.
I needed an inexpensive way to keep my camera running for several hours, without spending a lot of cash; I don’t make a living doing photography.
After some research, I found a solution using the following parts:
1. An AC/DC adapter for my camera - $30. NOTE: Depending on your camera, you may be able to find a cheaper adapter;
2. A 12v DC to 120v AC inverter rated for up to 5 watts - $5. You’ll need the type that plugs into an auto cigarette lighter power point. Since the adapter for my camera only draws about 1-watt, I could go for the the least expensive inverter on ebay. Basically, the more watts the AC inverter provides, the more expensive it will be (and the more power it will pull from our next component;
3. A portable car jump starter, with 12 volt DC power outlet - $30 to $100. Anything with an auto power outlet will do for running a camera. You can find these anywhere fine automobile accessories are sold, and the prices vary based on the number of cranking amps they provide. Spend more on your jump starter if your planning on running your camera for a week or more, spend less if you’re just going to run your camera for a few days. Also, be practical and get one that has enough juice to jump your car.
Once you have the parts, rigging it up is really simple:
1. Hook up the camera AC/DC adapter to the camera.
2. Connect the camera AC/DC adapter to the DC to AC inverter.
3. Connect the DC to AC inverter to the 12v DC power port on the jump starter.
4. Power on your camera.
If everything is kosher, your camera should power on as normal. If not, you know what to do. Here’s a photograph of my final setup for the the tide cycle time lapse mentioned above. Click the image for additional comments on the setup:
And here is the final product. I was very fortunate to catch the rise of a full moon in the frame of the camera, which was not at all planned:
For this time lapse the camera was running for about 9 hours. The jump starter has a power meter on it, which I checked periodically throughout the day. It only had 3 levels: high, medium, and low, but the entire time it ran the jump starter never registered below a “high” power level. Base on that, this setup could power my Canon SD-750 for over a day, and probably longer.
Some notes of caution:
1. Most manufacturers warn against leaving your camera running on the AC/DC power supply for more than a few hours. However, my anecdotal research has found that Canon cameras can be powered for several days without issue.
2. If your camera is outdoors for an extended period, use precautions to protect it from the elements of wind, rain, morning dew, dust, intense sunlight; whatever might be present in your shooting situation.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions using the comments feature
