
Straight to the point
Whether you’re doing time lapse or especially video recording then you need to run your DSLR with one of these cables.
The USB Dummy battery cable is an absolute must if you want to rid yourself of constant battery swapping.
Dead, expensive Batteries?
Let’s face it stock camera batteries are often expensive tiny (around 1000-1300 mAh) and last around 30-40 minutes. You find yourself having to shell out lots of cash for extra batteries.
That means you need to stop everything, shut down your camera, and in some cases take the camera off your tripod just to get to the battery chamber.
So you have shelled out loads of money to get into a perfectly inconvenient workflow.
What if there was a better way?
Well, of course, there is as this is the 21st century and while there is no app for that however there IS a cable adapter for it.
Enter what is essentially the nameless cable that will eliminate battery changes for up to 36 hours (or eternally if you connect up to a USB AC adapter.)
The cable is simple and to the point.
Copy the camera battery form and connect to USB.
Large battery packs like this one on Amazon (Poweradd Pilot Pro3 30000mAh Power Bank (Dual Inputs/4A, 3 Outputs /4.5A).
With these large battery packs with 30K mAh, you can literally run your camera for days.
Of course, you can pick up 8K mAh batteries that will surely run your camera for hours on end and they go for as low as $10 on Amazon.
So if you generally don’t go over a couple of hours in film time you could buy one of the 15K mAh batts (just to be sure) and you’re out only about $15 bucks.
Buy a couple of USB Dummy battery cable and now you have redundancy
This USB dummy battery cable is super simple to use in that you just insert the one end of the cable that resembles the shape of the battery that fits your camera and the other end is standard USB so you just connect to any 5V USB source (battery/AC Adapter etc) and you are switched on!
Some cables come with two USB connectors in case you come across USB Battery packs with only a single amp coming out of the USB source. If one cable doesn’t work then you can connect up to two sources
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Below find some examples (with links) of cables available on Amazon.com.
I have used a couple of them and they have been flawless. You can also get them from Ebay.com but be careful here since many on ebay ship from China.
They are all from China at the end of the day but do you really want to wait 4-6 weeks for your cable to arrive.
Canon |
EOS 5DS, 5DS R, 5D Mark IV, 5D Mark III, 5D Mark II, 6D, 7D, 7D Mark II, 760Da, & 60D,70D,80D |
Nikon | |
Sony |
a3000, a5000, a6000, a6500, a7R, a7S, RX10 III,NEX-3N (NP-FW50) |
Panasonic |
DMC-GH3 DMC-GH4 DMC-GH5 SDQ SDQH (DMW-DCC12) |
Generally, you can either search Amazon for your camera name or by the numbering scheme of the original battery your camera comes with.
Where can I pick up a USB dummy battery cable?
They’re on Amazon
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