120V battery pack

joshua gallegos · October 12, 2013

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could recommend an affordable battery pack to light fixtures that are 120V, I plan on doing some exterior night scenes with minimal lighting and a generator would be out of the question, since it would require ADR, something I don't have in my budget. Are they more expensive than to rent a generator? Another possibility is perhaps using a generator and using a 50ft stinger so that the noise isn't so close.

I also wanted to use the battery pack outside a hotel location, and it's especially important to use ith there since there will be people sleeping while we shoot, so a generator would be out of the question there.

Also what type of device is used to power a small 12v Kino or (mini-flo), I plan on using the mini flo for moving shots and for closeups, I planned on adding 0013 and 1/2 CTO gels to the miniflo with a 56k tube to film under sodium vapor lamps.

I have no idea where I can find the battery packs and most rental houses do not rent them.

Thank you.

Adrian Sierkowski · October 13, 2013

The kinos will often power off of car batteries, but in truth this sounds like something perfect for LED lights which can take batteries-- some take AA batteries, others take V Lock of Gold Mount rechargables.

one could also fab up a system with some deep cycle marine batteries wired to give a 12V output with the appropriate cable.

Or one could just run a car with an inverter on it if it's not too high of an amp draw (though i'd do this from under the hood not the cigarette lighter unless you're only pulling say 100Ws).

Phil Rhodes · October 13, 2013

Bear in mind even 100W at 12V is over 8 amps. I wouldn't ideally want to trust a cigarette lighter socket even with that, although usually it will work to an extent. Last thing you want is a load of melted plastic all over your carpet.

Adrian Sierkowski · October 13, 2013

I'm pretty sure the fuse for most cigarette lighters is a 15A, but should be at least 10. the worst I could see happening would be popping the fuse. and the max inverters they tend to have for them are about 150W-- i'm meaning the ones you can buy at an auto-store ect. Some trucks may be wired more heavily, though.

joshua gallegos · October 13, 2013

LEDs seem like the ideal choice but they are inordinately expensive to rent, plus I prefer to match the sources that are within the location (fluorescent with fluorescent, etc). I suppose I could just get a generator with a couple of stingers so that the generator is far away from the actual scene, so that the noise is minimized completely.