Custom Strobe Power Pack

[savona]

Have you ever wanted to use your strobes on the road?

Portable power systems can be very expensive. Here we show you how one member made a portable power pack for under $100.

I am a photographer on a strict budget. Outdoor shoots are not one of my money making activities, but it is one of my personal favorites. I could not justify the cost of buying one of these high end manufactured devices. The following is what I came up with for an alternative. If you decide to try this remember you are using this at your own risk. I am in NO way responsible for anything that happens to yourself, your equipment, your house or car. Please read a little about electricity (both DC & AC) or ask someone qualified before proceeding (not me because I have no idea).

OK, So my father had this old instant power jump starter in his garage. It's a device that you can charge in your house; it has jumper cables on it which you can jump your car with if the battery dies. Now all I needed is a way to transform the DC current (made from the jump starter) to AC so I could run my lights. From my younger days working on car stereos I had an old AC Inverter in the garage. An Inverter transforms DC current into AC current to run home electronics in your car. They are mostly used to charge laptops these days. Well, the AC Inverter I had in the garage was dead (it was from 1987). So I found a cheap one at Sears. A Die Hard 400w power inverter with two AC outlets which cost around $50 (400w is the minimum I would use, I found out the hard way).

I am sure by now you have pieced this mystery together. You charge the jump starter up at home. Plug the inverter into the jump starter and the strobe into the inverter. Done.

Here it is, the ghetto IED (Improvised Exposure Device).

Sorry about the photo quality, I only had my phone and I just worked 14 hours.


After thinking about this for a couple days and thinking of ways to do this even cheaper, THEN it hit me. The local Farmers Market, Auction, Yard Sale, etc... I went to a place here in South Jersey called the Berlin Farmers Market, known by the locals as the Berlin Auction. It turns out I could have made this whole thing for under $20. Three stands were selling a jump starter for $15, which translates to $12-13 after some simple haggling. Six people had power inverters, three looked like they powered the lights on Noahs Arc. The other two were both definite possibilities. The first was a 600w inverter, maybe 2 years old for $10. The second a 400w, maybe 3 or 4 years old and the stickers were all scratched up for $5. This just goes to show you that being in a hurry is rarely a good thing.

I tested this setup in my garage for over an hour. From what I have seen this setup performs perfectly. There is however some slower charge times when you shoot multiple shots with the strobe on full power. I popped the flash 80 times at full power, 25 times at half power, and 25 times at minimum power. The battery in the jump starter was still full when I was done. If your jump starter has a power indicator on it like mines does you may see it drop after multiple shots. The battery needs time to recover after pushing out that much power over and over. Mine dropped almost to the dead level with 20 simultaneous full power shots. After shutting the strobe off the battery recovered back to the full position and went on to shoot another 110 times.

[LuisV]

Interesting idea. But you have to be EXTREMELY careful. In fact, I would recommend you don't do this. The problem with this is the nature of the power the inverter puts out. They (most of them) produce a modified sine wave AC current. This could fry the electronics in some devices. Most strobes like nice clean power. Be very careful b/c a savings of a $200 here could cost you a strobe.

There are some cool options that have been released lately. (well since this article was put up......)

Look into the "Vagabond II" from the folks at Alien Bees. These are a similar idea to what you put here. It's a 12V rechargeable battery hooked up to a inverter. However, the inverter here is designed to produce a pure sine wave. Nice clean power. The current price hovers around $300. Not too shabby! They claim you can run 2 400WS ABs for over 100 cycles.

I've not had a big need for these setups. I shoot with a couple of Nikon Strobes (SB800's) when I work on site. I control them with a control unit on camera (SU 800). I use couple of 5 in 1's to get the diffusion and/or reflections I need. Those provide more than enough power.

However, I've not shot outdoors in the dusk or dark...... that's where I would see a real need for the big boys. I have been toying with the idea of getting a computer UPS. They come in decent sizes (1200VA to 1500VA) that can likely power the strobes (no modeling lights) for hundreds of cycles and they have multiple outputs. I don't know how long they would last. A 1300VA unit runs about $200.

I have to test I guess...... Anybody ever try that?