Or you could just buy a little Honda genie, mine always works and all I need is 2L of fuel for 8 hours (pure sine wave output inverter). That way you can sit back and have a laugh when the visual guys stumble and fall into their dobs because their torch batteries went flat .
It seems strange that people who spend litteraly Thousands of Dollars on their equipment to take images Will Not spend Hundreds of dollars to make sure that they have sufficiant power to do the job
Most of the comments here appear to be related to a backup 240v supply. Everything I have can be operated at 12V and my approach is to have a 12V battery. I have a regular car battery about 50 Amp hours and everything is supplied off that. Depending on how much gear I have running (dew heaters are the big killer) it can last all night, but if it doesnt, I keep a watch on the voltage (I have a voltmeter connected in)and recharge if necessary. It would be simple to float the battery on a mains power supply (when available), but I just havent felt the need to do that.
Main reason for this approach is I often go out to remote palces where there is no possability of mains power. But it has also been very successful at Astrofest through a couple of power failures.
I dont bother buying a deep cycle battery as the cost of a regular one is much less and the one I have has now lasted almost 3 years and still is OK. IMO replacing a little more frequently is more cost effective.
This approach is of no use to someone running a PC on the mains, but my laptops, cameras, mount etc run just fine on 12V.
I bought a UPS about a year ago when we had a series of blackouts here in Roma. I forget the capacity but I have run a laptop, camera and the EQ6 for 2 hours with too much problem. By the time the UPS started showing signs of stress the power was back on. On this UPS there is a serial output on the back to connect to a laptop/PC to monitor 240v input and ouput (displays on the laptop screen Vout in a graph). Good investment of less than $200.
Adrian
PS to make things go further I also have a Jump start Pak from Repco $90, I have run the EQ6 and 350D for 7-8 hours with no problems, and an inverter (gift).
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