Need advice: potentially no power source for a while
 

I'll be heading to Ethiopia for 3 weeks in July. Going there to teach kids at an orphanage and help them fix up the school.

I'll of course bring along my gear, but there is a potential shortage of power sources.

What would you do? I'm mainly concerned with not having enough juice for my camera; less so for my flashes because I have Eneloops which can stay juiced up without me worrying that the batteries will lose charge.

I am using a 5D, so my batteries will be BP-511's.

Get the BG-E4 battery grip for your 5D: not only will it let you use two batteries at once (twice as long without having to swap them) but it has a plastic carrier that you load up with six AAs. Then you can use the same Eneloops as your flash.

^^ that's pretty much your only choice.. not sure how good solar power inverters are, but that's another choice for charging your batteries.

Solar's okay if you don't need to take it backpacking or something. It can be kinda big for the level of capacity you'd need, not massive, but not really portable either. Should work well though, as long as you have lots of sun.

There are those backpacks with solar cells built into them too.

That's some good work you're going to do in Ethiopia. Good on ya. Which organization are you going with?

If you will be travelling on a car that you rented or chartered from a guide, you can use an inverter. Other then that, I would recommend either a battery grip where you can carry a tons of AA batteries or solar panels to charge them. Ethiopia does have a lot of sun!

Be safe while your away! :)

I'll probably be getting that grip then, for the ability to do AA's. I'm on a pretty tight budget because of all the other costs I'll have to be working on (i.e. shots, passport renewal, etc.).

Blessing the Children Canada...I'm pretty nervous as well as excited. I'm trying to learn more about their culture before I go so I can understand them more....already learning that the time system is totally different than ours (something about having to reset the clock at a certain time of the day!).

It's awesome that you are going there to do that. Where in Ethiopia are you going? The weather there is a bit more mild than most other African countries. I bet you'll get a ton of great pictures. Portraits from there will be amazing to see.

Remember to bring filters though. The children love cameras and they may try to yank at your camera just to see what they look like in the picture (I ended up with finger prints on my lenses lol).

I'm going to a town called Debre Zeit (sometimes spelled "Zeyit"). Right now it's around 30 degrees. It's supposed to be rain season during the time that I'm going so I gotta get my rain gear ready too.

Random thought.. how about buying a ton of cheap ebay batteries and keeping them around as last resort backups? They won't last as long as OEM but they'll definitely be useful if you had nothing left.. also quite cheap.

I'm still skeptical as to how long it takes to charge batteries with those Solar backpacks.

Only thing is, after they are charged they will lose their charge after a bit of time.

In your situation, sacrifices have to be made. Since taking less pictures isn't a good option, a few extra cheap batteries on the side could be a life saver (who knows, bring ten!)

I would probably bring 5-10 el cheapo batteries, and try and get my hands on 3-4 OEM batteries for the battery grip. Do you know how long you'll be out of power?

I wonder how well these work..

http://www.ambientweather.com/poexsopobach.html

If he was to bring 5-10 cheap batteries fully charged into Ethiopia, he would have 5-10 completely useless discharged batteries in less than a few weeks.

LiIo batteries go from fully charged, to fully discharged in a few weeks when not in use?

EDIT: Sorry, I was thinking about NiMH for some reason

My bad, I was under the impression that they discharge much quicker. I researched it a bit and Li-ion batteries discharge at a rate of 5-10% per month. More than enough for my uses.

I'm going to go this route. Thanks LiquidTurbo!

I bought two from this seller: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=120555281861
Supposedly genuine Canon...but who knows.

Sounds good man, good luck on your trip. Stay healthy and come back with a load of pics!

Make sure you cover the contacts on your spare batteries.

I know airlines won't allow LiIon batteries on if they not covered or installed in a device. If you don't have those spare covers you can use some electrical tape to cover the contacts.

Covers usually come with genuine Canon batteries, if not this place is the only place that I have found that sells them http://www.greenbatteries.com/303-0070605111.html very pricy from them.

^

Good Call.

I was going to suggest a Voltaic Backpack but the multiple ebay battery probably will work out better