Nikon EP-B5 with Quantum Turbo

[ben_hutcherson]

The other day, I bought on Ebay what was supposed to be a CD100 to fit/power cameras that take an EN-EL3/EN-EL3e battery from a Quantum Turbo(original Turbo-the one in the leather/leatherette case). My main interest, despite the bulk, was that even though I have several working EN-EL3 batteries, they are getting on in years.

What I received was the CD100 cable, which has the "microphone" plug for the Turbo pack at one end and a 4 pin plug at the other end. Also in the box-and I should have caught this from the listing photos-was a genuine Nikon EP-B5. This is the size and shape of a Nikon EN-EL15, but is designed to be used with an AC adapter.

In my mind, I could think of reasons why the combo should and should not work. Even though the Turbo is primarily meant to be a high voltage pack for flash recharge, but can supply low voltage. It does have an 8V battery in it, and the "high voltage" external pack cords for a lot of flashes do have low voltage pins also to run the flash displays/logic circuits(something I sort of wish Nikon had done with the SB800/900/910/5000 and SD8/9 packs so that you don't need the AAs in the flash...but that's a different discussion). Quantum also makes cables that are meant to plug into the Turbo and feed flashes that don't have high voltage plugs. 

The one thing that gives me a pause is that the EN-EL3 is 7.4V and the EN-EL15 is 7.0V. At the same time, the EP-B5 is meant to work with the Nikon EH-5 series power supplies, which all seem to output 9V. That makes me think that there is a voltage regulator circuit inside it, or otherwise that cameras that take the EN-EL15 don't care if they're fed 9V(and they certainly are okay with 14.4V from an EN-EL18, although I know that it's not a direct comparison since that's done through a battery grip). I would "just try it" but my only EN-EL15 cameras now are my D8xx cameras, all of which I care about too much to try unless I know the combo is safe. 

I may call or email Quantum later today and get their thoughts, as I've found them super helpful and forthcoming with information in the past. I'm sure Nikon would say no...

In the mean time, I'm wondering if anyone has used this combo.

[mike_halliwell]

I suspect lots of people have read this post and not given a definitive reply cos' it's too risky!

Hoping there's a voltage reducer is a recipe for £££ repairs....😱

[ben_hutcherson]

Well, Quantum assured me it was okay and that its output voltage was the same as Nikon's AC adapter, although since it's from a battery and not a wall adapter it should actually be "cleaner." I don't have the genuine Nikon adapter to test this out, but a voltmeter showed me 9V across the pins of the Quantum cord. That is in fact what Nikon's battery spits out.

I'd planned on doing some indoor macro work anyway with my D800, and needed to stick around the living room yesterday and today rather than my upstairs office/studio. I've mostly been running the D800 and D850 off EN-EL18s and actually didn't have any charged EN-EL15s, which gave me a good excuse to try this. I'm using the PB4 bellows, which work just fine with the ungripped camera but get tricky with the grip(you need to use an extension tube to hang the camera off the back of the bellows, and when you need both relatively low magnification and high magnification in the same session it can get to be a real pain of shuffling everything around).

I'd not necessarily use this combo all the time, but it's nice to have it as an option. Since I was doing a lot of live view, the camera does pull a decent amount of power. The current EN-EL15c is rated at 2280mAh, although admittedly the Turbo doesn't give a ton of extra power with its 3.2Ah battery. With that said, in this situation I would probably use an original EN-EL15 since I've standardized to the A/B/C versions in my bags(the D850 shipped with the A version, and seems to really hit the older ones hard, while the D800 and D810 are perfectly content with the newer ones). The original version is 1900mAh.

Here's the current working set-up. It's pretty self explanatory, but it's a D800 on PB4 bellows with the short mount 105mm f/4 Micro-a rather interesting lens that will focus from infinity to I think twice life size or somewhere in that area on the PB4 and if you really wanted to get fancy could use it in regular non-macro use with the limited shift and swing offered by the PB4. Window and incandecent are providing a mix of fill in light, and the bounced flash is gelled to match the ~4600K color temperature I'm measuring on the area being photographed. Exposure is set at 1/60 with f/8 preset on the lens(actual aperture dependent on how close I'm getting) which picks up just enough ambient to help me out. Despite my not-infrequent complaints about it, iTTL-BL is actually serving me well here, even though there's a bit of a lag using live view as the camera has to drop the mirror and close the shutter to fire the preflash, then of course raise it back up and open the shutter to take the photo.

Even though my studio macro set-up is more convenient and I generally have better light quality, this is actually sort of nice in that I can normally can only crank the power down so much on my Norman strobes, and often I'll still end up at f/16 or smaller. That's great for DOF, but of course diffraction can kill resolution. I'm usually doing this kind of macro work to see the really fine detail present on the objects I'm photographing, and diffraction obscures what the set-up would otherwise be capable of seeing.

Also, just as a matter of convenience, I'm testing a freshly rebuilt NiCd pack in the flash, but I do have the proper cable to run this flash off of the Turbo also. If speed were important, the flash takes 6 seconds to recycle from a full power dump from the NiCd pack vs. about 1.5 seconds for the Turbo on high(or 2.5-3s on low). I have a pigtail splitter to run two devices off a single Turbo pack, or if I really wanted to get fancy I do have two of these packs.

And even though I hadn't intended this as a picture thread, I'll share some re once I've had a chance to work them up.

[ben_hutcherson]

Being able to swing the lens can be a real benefit to keeping something not aligned with the sensor plane in focus without needing to stop down ludicrous amounts...

And yes, using swing was MUCH less work than actually getting this to stay in place flat without rolling off.