Nikon SLR Cameras

A battery pack for a vivitar 285hv?

Shaina Polk
Shaina Polk

I have two vivitar 285hv flashes, my only prob is i won't to use a battery pack like the
Quantum Turbo Battery Pack, but something a little less expensive. But every time i search itll say for either canon or nikon? :0 could someone help

Rudy H
Rudy H

Unfortunately there are no good low cost options. There's very little market for battery packs for anything other than Canon or Nikon flashes. So you are left with Quantum or Lumedyne and they are both expensive. If you go for a Lumedyne then you would need a cable http://www.bhphotovideo.com/..._Cord.html

The lower cost solution is to use an Al Jacobs battery pack
http://www.aljacobs.com/my_products/battery-pack.html but it is only a battery rather than a voltage converter. I've made my own and while it works better than lower capacity NiMH batteries it does not speed up the charging enough for my purpose. After a 1/2 power pop it takes about 2.5 seconds to bring the flash to full charge. I would like to have half that.

I did a shoot today with a mix of studio lights and speedlights. I had a couple of 285HV to help fill in the background on white seamless. I had to keep slowing down and not shoot faster than the charge time and this was limiting how fast my model could move to the next shot. But then if I could have charged it up faster I probably would have burned out the lights. When I was copying the files over I saw that I was close to 1100 shots for the day. No wonder I had to change out the batteries in my 580EX's so often. I have to get some more studio strobes!