I am looking for a product, or way, which has to be fairly portable, to charge the batteries on Canon DSLR's in the field.

I have found things such as this --> http://store.solio.com/s.nl;jsessionid=0a01074e1f43cdc81fbc6a514882bbb9a7e0588838a5.e3eTaxeKbh0Te34Pa38Ta38Qa3b0?sc=7&category=109

However, I don't know if I can plug in a battery charger into this sort of thing.

Can anybody steer me in the right direction?

Thanks!

Those particular devices have a battery in them, making the combined weight of the unit a fair amount. Also, some of them will not power a standard charger. And of course if you do find a solar power source that could run your camera battery charger, you would need the charger along too, which is more hardware. Be sure to consider just bringing along additional batteries that are fully charged. That worked very well for me on an extended trip away from any charging devices.

Also remember that if you try to use a solar charging system, that can be very difficult if you are on the move during the day. You may find you don't have much time when there is daylight to do any charging.

Thanks for the response.

On this trip I'll have lots of solar energy at my disposal, and the size and weight of the device I linked isn't prohibitively heavy for my purposes.

I'll be away from power for several weeks and I hope to shoot every day! So... Hmm...

This one might also work. It uses solar cells or USB. You can get a car cord with USB output to charge from a car.

http://www.solartechnology.co.uk/shop/freeloader-pro.htm

Can Canon cameras take AA batteries in the vertical grip? If they can, the easiest solution is probably to buy a solar charger for AAs, since there are lots of good chargers available for those, even foldable ones.

Alternatively, buy a Pentax K200D, which uses AA batteries, is weather sealed, very robust and rather cheap now.

Jorgen Udvang wrote:
Can Canon cameras take AA batteries in the vertical grip? If they can, the easiest solution is probably to buy a solar charger for AAs, since there are lots of good chargers available for those, even foldable ones.

Alternatively, buy a Pentax K200D, which uses AA batteries, is weather sealed, very robust and rather cheap now.


Good idea. I'll look into solar AA chargers.

I wanted to leave the grip behind, but this might be the way to go - provided the camera doesn't eat up the AA's too fast. This is something I have not tested.


As for the Pentax... I've sunk enough $ into Canon that I'll stick with them for at least a little while longer!

Thanks.

scalesusa wrote:
This one might also work. It uses solar cells or USB. You can get a car cord with USB output to charge from a car.

http://www.solartechnology.co.uk/shop/freeloader-pro.htm


Thanks for the link!

That one has what you want I think (depends on the canon body) as it has 'Cam Caddy' which looks like it can charge Canons batteries unless you have a 1 series or 5D2/7D in which case you might need to use the non chipped cheap knock offs and put up with not having any battery info.
The AA's is another good idea but in the older bodies the AA's do seem to run out quickly

Brunton makes the best and they can be daisy chained or connected in parallel to get the required voltage and current. be prepared to pay a premium though.

Herb...

Thom Hogan has an article on solar charging in the back country: Link

Thanks again for the links.

It seems like I might be able to do something like what Thom Hogan has done there. Though, I need to find my materials locally...

So, if I can find a way to mate something like this l with something like this then I might be in luck.

Now I find myself looking for a way to do this, or something similar.

I wonder if I can use one of these Solio devices with an appropriate Canon 12V battery charger and the associated Solio car adapter.