The Internet is a wonderful place, full of entertainment, shopping, information, social groups and very near anything else you can conjure to mind. I myself happen to be a frequent Internet user who often rummages through various site looking for the information which I'm certain is out there somewhere, but where? Well, I don't really know where it's all at even if my wife thinks that I must know with how much time I spend parked in front of a monitor. So, I've decided to put together my own little blogspot in which to make my minuscule contribution to the Internet monster, right here. Read on and I'll attempt to share with the world how to externally power your shoe mount flash unit for the least amount of money. For the photography gear hounds out there looking to get the most bang for the buck this should be right up your alley.

What I'm about to disuse here is an inexpensive way to externally power nearly all shoe mount flash units in order to provide portable flash that lasts and lasts. Specifically, this will deal with how to power them for use in a low budget portable studio setup that is easy enough for almost anyone to construct. So, why would you need something like this? I'm guessing that if you have found this page then you already know the answer to that question, but if not the benefits to an external power source include; more flashes per charge, faster recycle times, less heat build up in the flash unit, and it's light enough to take nearly anywhere you need extra light. In this article a Sigma EF500 Super hot shoe flash is shown. This flash with NiMH rechargable AA batteries with a fresh charge will recharge from a full power flash in just under 4 seconds. The same flash will recharge in just under 2 seconds and will allow 500+ full power flashes on a single charge with the external power source shown in this article. The NiMH AA batteries are rated to allow just 100 full power flashes.

To kick things off on your project you'll need to either build or buy a power cord to interface with your flash. Dedicated cables are available for most brands of flashes including Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Mets, Sigma and othrs directly from Quantum that clip directly into where the AA batteries would normally go allowing an external battery to be used in their place. The biggest drawback to these is cost as most of these cables are priced between $40-70 and will need to be modified to work with the battery setup I'm going to show build here. My suggestion for the very budget minded is to simply build your own cable from scratch with dummy AA cells made from wood dowels. With a short amount of time combined with a little crafty work you can have several sets of these put together.


The picture above shows the completed cables already assembled and ready for use. To get to this point you'll need to collect a few things;

length of 9/16” wood dowel
small spool of red 16-18ga wire
small spool of black 16-18ga wire
two #8 ring terminals
two #8 x 1/2” pan or button head screws
roll of electrical tape
One wire plug connector (both male and female sides)
Two .187 female wire connectors (optional)

Once you have rounded up those supplies you'll need to start by cutting four sections of the wood dowel to be used as as fake AA cells. The wooded cells should be just shorter than the real deal AA's to fit properly into the battery compartment once the screws and wires are attached. With the new wood cells cut I would suggest pre-drilling the screw holes with a 1/8” drill bit for mounting the #8 screws to prevent the dowels from splitting when you insert the screws into them.

Next, cut two equal lengths of red and black wire to about 12” long and strip back the insulation on both sides roughly 1/4”. Crimp one ring terminal onto each of the wires leaving the other end of the wire bare for the moment. With the terminals crimped to the wires attach the wire to the dowels with the #8 screws. Bend the ring terminals back so the wire is run back up to the other end of the dowel and securely wrap the towel and wire together with the electrical tape. No need to over do it with the tape, just keep the wire in place and cover any exposed metal other than the screw head.



The final step to completing the fake cells is to install a plug connector on the bare end of the wires. Shown below are the
30A Power Pole Connector (4 Black, 4 Red) Anderson-Sermos
which I've used for the last 20 years without a single failure. These may be overkill to some but when you need reliability there's no better solution.




Now that the dummy cells are build, nice job BTW, we'll move onto the power plant of this setup.

The power source that is shown here is the
PS-6100F POWER-SONIC 6V 12AH AGM BATTERY WITH .187 TERMINAL
Sealed Lead-Acid Batteries, AGM— Absorbed glass material which can be mounted in any position without fear of acid leaking out. These weigh about 4lbs which is just heavy enough to weigh down a light stand and light enough to still be very portable. You can also get smaller batteries like this
PS-640F POWER-SONIC 6V 4.5AH AGM BATTERY WITH .187 TERMINAL
model that if you would like to build a similar setup to this but to be carried in a belt pack or coat pocket. This type of battery holds 90% of the full charge for a month and will have 75% of the full charge three months later so you don’t have a fear of these going dead in a week. Charging them is easy with this
WK6V1000 WERKER 6V 1000MAH AUTOMATIC AGM CHARGER
quickly and easily. Charging a 12ah battery at 1amp (1000mah) will take approximately 16 hours if it is completely dead but on most occasions I find that my batteries come to a full charge after only 4-8 hours. These batteries accept about 75% of the charging power applied to them, meaning that a 3ah battery will require 4 hours of charge at 1000mah and that a 6ah battery will require about 8 hours of charge time.







Wiring the battery is simple from here. First cut two equal lengths of red and black wire approximately the length of your light stand and strip both ends of the wire about Ό” back. Crimp on one of the .187” female wire connectors to each wire and check that it is secure. Then, attached the opposite end of the wire plug connector to the bare end of each wire making certain that the red and black wires match the red and black wires on the other end of the plug. With both connectors now attached to the wires you can push the .187” female connectors onto the battery terminals, black on negative and red on positive. Optionally, if you are comfortable with a soldering iron, you can solder the wires directly to the battery terminals. Soldering offers a more secure attachment that cannot be pulled off easily however is not going to effect the performance of this setup. Once you have the battery wired go ahead and run some electrical tape around the wires every 6” or so to keep them from getting tangled and out of control. You'll also note that the battery shown below is wrapped with tape, again to keep the terminals from being exposed and possibly shorting on anything,



Now that you've managed to get all the wire work done all that's left is to slide your dummy AA cells into your flash unit and plug them into the 6 volt battery to power it up. Shown here is a Sigma EF500 Super hot shoe flash which requires the red, positive, lead to be placed in the upper rearmost battery slot with the negative black lead going to the lower rearmost position. Place the remaining two, unwired portions of dowel into the empty slots as place holders to keep the wired dowels in position.








The last shot below is the battery with the wire harness attached inside of an old hip pack that were so common in 1993. These make a great pouch to hold your new portable flash power source to nearly anything you need. You can also see the cheapo hiking clip on the side strap of the fanny pack which I often use to attach this unit to a boom stand so that the battery doubles as a power source and a counterweight for the boom arm. A handy little trick when you need to bring as little as possible but need everything to work well together.



In a future installment we'll discuss the use of this setup for a simple and easy to use portable studio using a simple umbrella kit.


Umbrella Kit - Includes: 2 Umbrellas, Light Stands, Brackets and a Case