Yesterday shoot a few frames for the first time with my recently acquired PB-E2 attached to my EOS-3. Was immediately amazed by the frame advance speed in single mode and the percieved shortage on mirri blackout time. I was shootign indoors with flash in Manual mode setting 1/125 @ f5.6, I was thinking for a moment I screwed up and set something like over 1/1000 speed by mistake, but checking again it turned to be really 1/125.
The mirror blackout was even hardly nticeable and film advanced to the new frame in a split of the moment - everything noticeably fster then I got used to shooting with EOS-3 without PB-E2. To mention: I use just regular 8xAAs (Energizer) in the grip and according to the spec the performance should be about teh same as with plain EOS-3, but apparently it is still somehow faster....

Any experiences ?

The PB-E2 isn't the extra batterypack but the powerbooster! And with the powerbooster you'll get 7 or 8fps instead of 3.
The proof of this is the amout of batteries you mentioned, the batterypack just takes 4 AA's, the powerbooster takes 8 AA's.
Another option of the powerbooster is the 2nd releasebutton which isn't availlable on the batterypack.

Best regards,



Rob

Thanks Rob, but this is not 100% correct: PB-E2 indeed combines a vertical grip funcitonality with booster abilities, however, according to its specifications putting inside 8xAAs isn't going to boost up an fps relatively to plain EOS-3 with 2CR5 (both should give about 4.5 fps) even though the total power is 12V instead of 6 out of 2CR5.
Having said that I epxerienced noticeable increase in film advance speed (at least in single mode) and apparently shorter mirror blackout durations.

Alexz,

With the the PB-E2 the fps should increase to 7 when loaded with the appropriate batteries or dedicated battery-pack. I use it together with a 1D and frame-rate is almost the same.

Regards,
Guido

That is Guido, just as you said "with appropriate batteries or dedicated battery-pack" which is not my case (they referred for lithiums or the pack). As fasr as I remember with regular AAs it should provide roughly similar performance as the camera alone with 2CR5. But somehow even with just plain AAs theer is certain boost in performance...

Alexz,

Guido is quite right. Fps with PB-E2 increases from 4.3 to 6 (shooting mode oneshot AF cont.) or from 3.3 to 5 (Ai servo) according to Canon. And i think your camera still works on 6V, the 8 batteries are conected into 2 parallel strings of 4 batteries in series. giving a higher poweroutput at the same voltage.

Best regards,



Rob

I use it together with a 1D

That would be a neat trick...

OH guys, my sencere apology...
Just figured teh original manual of the grip (I though I lost it) - you're certainly correct, I'm wrong.
With regular AAs (LR6) on H mode (and I never switched to L) it indeed provides 6 fps in Single and 5 in AI Servo, so this is where my wondering came from... :-)

Anyway, highly appreciate your calrification, Alex

BTW, your comment Rob about actual battery connections certainly makes sense - provides twice as much current output ability to drive the motor at the same voltage to achieve higher performance.

molson wrote:
I use it together with a 1D

That would be a neat trick...

Yep, bolted together I get 15fps

I meant compared to 1D......


Grtz,
Guido

the 8 batteries are conected into 2 parallel strings of 4 batteries in series. giving a higher poweroutput at the same voltage

Not sure this is true or not, but I don't think it has anything to do with how the PB-E2 increases the film advance rate.

The PB-E2 incorporates an additional motor and gear train which take over some of the work from the camera's built-in motors, which allows each function (mirror cocking, shutter priming, and film advance) to operate faster.

Without the PB-E2, the camera has one small motor that performs the film rewind, shutter priming, and mirror cocking functions. When the PB-E2 is attached, its motor takes over the shutter and mirror operations, speeding up these operations, while the low-speed planetary gear set in the booster increases the camera's film advance rate from 4.3 FPS to 6 FPS with the 8xAA battery pack.

Installing the NP-E2 battery pack switches the booster from the low-speed gear to the high-speed gear, which boostes film advance to 7 FPS.

It's all explained in the sales brochure for the EOS 3.

Yeah Guildo, like you sense of humor :-))

Guildo is quite right,

The powerbooster incorporates an extra motor, somewhere in the sales brochure there is a view of the internals of the powerbooster. One can clearly see the extra motor.