06/15/13 Phase One failures using Silver vs Black batteries

Silver vs Black Phase One 7.2 volt Lithium Ion Batteries

As many Phase One users may know the main battery used in most modern Phase One Digital backs, is based on a Canon Video camera battery. In fact in the older Phase One cameras which had the battery external to the back, like the P45+, P65+ etc. you could use Canon’s AC adapter/battery setup on Phase One cameras which gave you a much longer life in the field. This all ended however when Phase One decided to place the batteries inside the case as in the newer IQ series of backs.

One issue I have had with all Phase One batteries, is that they don’t’ tend to last very long in the field. The older batteries were 2600 millamp hours and in most cases with a IQ160 I would get about 2 hours or less in the field. When Phase One announced the IQ backs, they also increased the millamp rating on their batteries to 2900. In a nutshell millamps tells you how long a battery will last at charge i.e. 2600 will last a shorter period of time than 2900. However as I also moved to a tech camera setup with my IQ 160, I found that my battery use increased considerably. Since the IQ backs don’t really have a very good live view I tend to do a considerable amount of checking after a series of shots. In the past 6 months, I have found that some of this review is no longer necessary as I have gotten much more confident with my tech camera and focus. The ultimate solution is still a better live view but as long as Phase uses CCD technology, I have been told this will not happen.

So what do you do when you know you will be in the field all day or maybe two or three days? You carry a bunch of batteries. About the time I was introduced to the Phase One IQ series of digital backs, I also discovered that there was a much cheaper battery alternative. Ebay and some U.S. Phase One dealers sell a silver battery which looks and feels just like the black Phase One branded cells. They are all 2600 millamp but at 1/2 the price. My thoughts were to just purchase more of the silver cells and then carry them on trips. They don’t weight that much and charged up with the same Phase One charger. In fact I designed a battery sleeve that I could carry over my shoulder, based on a hunters belt. The Phase One batteries will fit into the same size as a 12 gauge shotgun shell!

At first, I really noticed no differences and pretty much stopped using my older Phase One LI batteries. Lithium cells in theory should not have a “battery life” issue but I noticed that my batteries that dated back to 2008 and 2009 where definitely getting shorter run times. There is no way to “re-condition” a lithium cell like you can with Ni-Mh cells. However in early 2013 I started to notice some strange issues with the Silver batteries, on my IQ160.

I had been shooting with the Arca rm3di, with various lenses, for about 1 hour. The battery installed was starting to get low, not blinking yet. In the past I have seen an error where the camera will tell me “no storage available” when I have plenty of room on the card left, and that has que’d me into looking at the battery level.

On this day, I got that same error, looked and the battery indicator was on the last indicator. So I powered off the back, and replaced the battery. Here is where the strange behavior starts.

The first silver battery I installed, did not power the back up. I double checked that it had locked and it did. This battery had come straight from the Phase charger, and showed 100%, one of the silver batteries. I went back and pulled the 2nd silver battery from the charger, which also showed 100%
The 2nd fully charged silver battery did power up the back. All seemed fine so I continued to shoot. However after each shot, I noticed that the battery indicator would drop from full, to 1/2, to the lowest indicator while the back was writing the file. As soon as the file was finished writing the battery indicator would return to 100%.
When I attempted to zoom to 100%, the zoom went to over 200% and locked. I could not go back down to normal view with a double tap. I had to power off and power back on. This series of errors happen several times, then I noticed on the right side, where the histogram should be there was nothing even though I could double tap the histogram to view it at 100% and then it showed up. Also both focus mask and the highlight warning would not engage when tapped.

This all went on for about 5 minutes as I tried to work the back. I finally took out the 8GB scan disk ultra card and tried a different card, but the same things happened. In frustration, I powered off, went back and pulled yet a 3rd battery this time a black Phase One cell, which had been charged up a couple of days’ ago. This time all the functions came back and the back seemed to work correctly.

All of this strange activity happened in about 20 minutes, the outdoor temperature was about 92 degrees and I was working in the sun. I finished up the testing with the black Phase One cell, but contacted my dealer Digital Transitions on Monday about the problems. I was concerned that something might be going wrong with the back and it needed to be sent off to Phase One. Digital Transitions took a different tack and asked me to try out the back in the same conditions but only to use the black Phase One cells, which I did, in fact on 3 separate shoots total hours 12 to 14. No problems and no repeats except for the low storage warning when the Phase One cells shows low. NO other problems which was a relief.

All of this strange activity happened in about 20 minutes, the outdoor temperature was about 92 degrees and I was working in the sun. I finished up the testing with the black Phase One cell, but contacted my dealer Digital Transitions on Monday about the problems. I was concerned that something might be going wrong with the back and it needed to be sent off to Phase One. Digital Transitions took a different tack and asked me to try out the back in the same conditions but only to use the black Phase One cells, which I did, in fact on 3 separate shoots total hours of back usage 8 to 10 hours. No problems and no repeats except for the low storage warning when the Phase One battery indicator shows low. NO other problems which was a relief.

Silver vs Black Phase One 7.2 volt batteries no 2

Out of curiosity I went back to the silver cells and worked with them in the IQ160. I had two of them that had been in my pack which had been sitting in the sun. The batteries were at 100% full charge, and when I placed one of them in the IQ160, I noticed that it was not fully engaging the brackets that hold the battery in place. When a new battery is placed in the IQ160 back (or older P series backs) the back always powers up. What happened when I placed the silver battery inside was that the back powered up, briefly then the screen went blank and the back powered off. I double checked that the battery was still locked into place and it was. However even locked in place you could still move the battery around and as I did this the back powered back on again. It seems that over time the outer casing material of the silver batteries, may expand, and contract and as it contracts it slightly deforms the shape of the battery enough that the slot where the battery fits on the IQ160 does not hold the battery firmly. I have also had several silver batteries that did not want to come out of the back after they were used. I first noticed this about 6 months ago, on silver batteries I had been using for about 8 months. This behavior implies that as the silver battery is used it gets hot (normal for a LI battery during discharge) but the silver case is also expanding and contracting causing deformations. Over time these deformations can cause the silver batteries to either:

Stick inside the IQ back, and become very hard to remove
Not fit snug enough in the case and allow movement which will either not give the correct voltage to the back and cause errors.

With the older P series backs where the battery is external to the back, this issue is moot since the battery is held in place by a hard metal sleeve and it can’t slide around.

I have not noticed any cracks in the silver batteries, but as a safety measure, I have stopped using them. I would not have any issues using them on a older P series back however like P45+.

These are the results of one person’s usage of a IQ160 and the silver batteries that are sold to replace the standard black Phase One cells. If you have using these silver batteries and are experiencing any of these issues, before you send your IQ off to Phase One, try working only with the black Phase One batteries and see if your problems persist.

Comments

Graham Welland says

July 9, 2013 at 3:08 pm

Paul,

Very interesting! Luckily I haven’t run in to this particular problem myself but I’m certainly concerned enough to relegate my silver batteries to use only with my P25+ and the original Phase One batteries with the IQ160.

Thanks for the heads up.
- paul says
  
  July 9, 2013 at 3:23 pm
  
  Hello Graham:
  
  Yes, it caught me totally by surprise. However I have been able to replicate the problem several times now, only on hot days. Digital Transitions was very helpful on this as Doug had noticed before in Death Valley, same exact symptoms.
  
  I hopefully will have the IQ260 by weeks end. I went ahead and traded in my 160. I am betting on further improvements to the 260 files down the road as right now the results are very close, with a edge to the 260. Based on my limited testing I was able
  to do in Dallas about 3 weeks ago.
  
  I was stunned yesterday when I first saw the Phase One notice on refurbished backs implying that the IQ160/DF+ and 80MM LS would be around 16K. However even at 25K, it’s a very very good deal, when you consider the DF+ and 80mm list for 8K. Phase claims everything is refurbished, but I can’t believe that
  they have so many DF+’s and 80mm LS lenses in a refurbished state.
  
  Thanks for reading and stay in touch.
  
  Paul