Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hi all,

I'm planning to place an order for a CC, and a bunch of CST, CSRB+ to replace my RFT1 receivers and transmitters; however, I'm a little concern about the battery life of CC, though.
From the manual, the battery life of CC is about 2 to 3 hours under normal use. I think that's when you have the LCD screen up all the time, so I like to know how is the CC battery life in real use.

To the owners of CC, could you please so kind to let me know how do you feel about CC battery life? How many shooting sessions can it last? How many hours can you get in actual shooting? Thanks in advance for your feedback.

To Paul,
Thanks for your great products and top customer service. I wish you're always in good health to continue creating more wonderful products. Quick question to you: Are you thinking on how to improve the battery life of CC?

Thanks,

Michael

Luap had a post on this just a couple of days ago.

http://www.paulcbuff-techforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=917&p=5954#p5954

The figure in the manual was based on 40-50% screen brightness on a set of alkaline batteries. As you dial in a lower screen brightness, the time will increase. As well, using lithium batteries will give you an incredibly long battery life. Onyl when the screen is on or during an actual shot does the CC use power. Initial impressions are the batteries die rediculously fast. In actuality, the screen is always on as you learn and play with the system. In actual use, it lasts quite a while even with a semi bright screen and alkaline batteries.

*edit- thanks for the link, I was looking for that!

Battery life on the CC hasn't really been an issue for me yet, even on a full day shoot. Of course, as with any serious shoot, it would be wise to always have at least 1 set of fresh backup batteries for all your gear ready to go... it takes only seconds to change them out anyway for another full charge of usage.

As stated in the various threads about this, when you first start learning to use the CC and are playing around with it all the time, sure the battery will drain out after a few hours - but even out the box with the factory alkalines, it lasted quite a bit longer than 3 hours for me. With a fresh set it should be longer. Thing is, during a shoot you'll usually only use it to meter a few times and adjust the lights accordingly, but once you nail the lighting for a particular shot, you don't really adjust much after that except on variations of the shot or if moving your subject. Using the CST as your trigger will give you even more life out of the CC, since you can just leave it in your pocket or whatever. I honestly don't really see where on a given day it would stay 'ON' for a full 2-3 hours continuously anyway.

Mine came set from the factory either 20% or 25% brightness and I think I even lowered it to around 13-16% (personal preference only) to where it's not super bright and can still be easily used outside in bright sunlight. One note I will mention though - is that in my experience -the CC doesn't fare too well with rechargeable 800mah NiMH's since they produce only 1.2v, so it sometimes begins to reset erratically. I've since switched to lithium's. Can't say how much longer they last over alkalines yet, but I haven't changed out my first set in over a month, shooting roughly about twice a week for a few hours at a time. Plus, they're a bit lighter too!

Hope this helps.

The sneaky thing that can bite you on battery life is that there is no hard on/off switch on the CC. So, depending on how you carry it, the toggles on the front get bumped and it powers up, drains.

It is a little fussy in this regard, can't just pack it without thinking about this particular aspect.

Lithiums will last a long time. One thing to note is you may not get much of a low battery warning as that operates off of voltage measurements. Lithium batteries maintain thier voltage until the expire, so the sudden drop does not linger in the warning voltage window for long.

Put it in a bar soap case to pack.

Ha... That's a pretty neat trick, RD! very effective.

I've been using an old tiffen filter pouch on mine when packing - it's softsided, but the buttons don't seem to be getting any play.

Yea, I finally found a little hard case that fits it--but it can't be roomy enough that the CC can move much, or it can still flop around and hit the buttons.

Thank you all for good info. Your replies have answered several of my concerns.