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Nikon Z6, Atomos Ninja V & Atomos Power Station Video = Fail

z6 ninja atomos power station nikon problem compatibility

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#1
Ascanio

Ascanio
  • Country Flag

Dear all here is my first post! Happy to join your community :)

 

Unfortunately it's a negative feedback, albeit one about a discontinued product: the Atomos Power Station Video. I wish to share my experience for it might save some time and hassle to others trying to rig up the Z6.

 

Summary: if you have newer gear, such as a Nikon Z6 and an Atomos Ninja V, released towards or after the end of life of the Atomos Power Station ( discontinued in 2017 ), you better avoid the Power Station altogether.

 

A little bit of context: I am riggings my Z6 with an Atomos Ninja V monitor/recorder ( surprising heh!? ) and a Tascam DR-60D audio recorder. Since noticing how fast the audio recorder chews through AA batteries I started thinking about power centralisation. That's when I discovered what looked like a super-cool gadget by Atomos, the Power Station, which promised all sorts of stuff... hot swapping good old NP-F batteries for continuous operation, dummy batteries and USB outputs to power all my devices at once, and more than anything, instantly convert to AC by inserting just one plug in the Power Station, and charge its batteries at the same time! Too good to be true.

 

That's it... too good to be true!

 

Ok, what have I learned today, by testing the device:

 

1) Atomos Power Station has batteries dead on arrival: if you purchase something that has been sitting for the better part of 2 or more years on a shelf, it's understandable that the included batteries have fallen below the voltage protection threshold. This doesn't mean necessarily that permanent oxidation has occurred, but it does mean you will need a professional charger to trickle them back into their operational voltage range.

 

2) Atomos Power Station is incompatible with the Nikon Z6: the Atomos Power Station and its EN-EL15 dummy battery simply don't talk the same language as the Z6, and she gets immediately annoyed. I just couldn't get it to switch on, except to rant about the battery not being usable. From what I read around, I assume the Z6 is happy with 8.6V or more, while most battery elimination devices out there stick with 8.0-8.4V. Maybe going with a genuine Nikon dummy battery could yield better results, but you'd have to modify the connector ( it comes with a D-tap I am not mistaken )... I didn't have one around to play with.

 

3) Atomos Power Station is incompatible with the Atomos Ninja V: It is only partially compatible. With AC power you will be good to go. If you have a Power Station laying around, you can definitely use it if you lost the transformer and dummy that came with the Ninja V ( ehm.... no, of course that's not me! ). But if you want to run off DC power, which is the main purpose of the Power Station, well... the peak current drawn from the Ninja V during booting and changing between Rec and Playback modes will upset the Power Station, forcing it to disable the battery in use to protecting from overload. Now if you have just one battery connected, the whole rig will go dark. If you have two charged batteries connected, it appears the Power Station will survive the event switching to the other battery: your rig will remain lit up, but you still need to uninstall and re-install the disabled battery to enable it again. And let me tell you... removing and inserting batteries on the Power Station is not a thing of pleasure!

 

4) Atomos Power Station introduces audio interference in the Atomos Ninja V: Powering the Ninja V from the Power Station ( AC or DC ) will introduce a LOT of noise in the Ninja's line-in input, making it basically unusable. I know that for good audio you simply want to record directly in the audio recorder... but sometimes you just don't want the extra hassle of synching in post, and the Ninja is "usable" ( mine has a faint hiss on the left channel anyway ).
In any case, if you are just recording audio on your video recorder to help synching later, audible noise shouldn't be a problem. I checked whether the DR-60D MkII would pickup noise from the Power Station and it seems like it doesn't. So if you always record audio separately, this is a non-issue for you.

 

On top of these, I have to reluctantly confirm the bad impressions I have seen in a few reviews:

 

5) No rubber on top or bottom: the Atomos Power Station will not pair steadily with things above or below it. Probably an easy fix by adding rubber pads, but still you have one problem to solve yourself.

 

6) Bottom 1/4 20 female shallow: I have tried different approaches to adding the Power Station to my rig ( also taking into account that you'd better have the batteries facing up to avoid physical stress to the battery compartments... more on that below! ), and I noticed that I couldn't install the Power Station on top of my BeastGrip plates: the screw would touch the end of the female before the surfaces of the two even touched, leaving the Power Station swivelling freely.

 

7) Battery compartments are poor: the whole thing is plastic, not metal. For something like the DR-60D MkII, plastic is not a big issue.. it is cheap, and you don't expect it to have to withstand a lot of physical stress. The Power Station on the other hand is ( was ) freakishly expensive and must withstand continuous installing/uninstalling of pretty heavy batteries ( the NP-F960 included in the box are already pretty heavy, and you can go even heftier! ). The production tolerances are so wide that the two battery compartments on the Power Station will give very different feeling. One would click easily when installing a battery, and getting it out would be a breeze. The other one would basically never click, and batteries would get stuck in it. This is my speculation, but I couldn't expect such a poorly executed part to last long in an operational condition, and there are rants out there that testify they don't.

 

 

I am by no way an Atomos hater, I love my Ninja V, and I love to buy good old Australian stuff. I think they are bound to change the name of the game ( though the choice of going ProRes instead of open source or license-free is a little contradictory to the whole idea of making cinematic video accessible to hobbyists ).

I really, really wanted the Atomos Power Station to work. I shelled a lot of money for it, and I found it beautifully styled, it looked compact, professional, and was promising to fix all my issues at once.

I am really sad that this wasn't the case. And to be honest, there must be a reason why it has been discontinued.

 

I have talked to an Atomos representative in Europe and there are internal discussions over the idea of introducing a power solution in the future, but no details were made available.

In my case I will have to go back to Google and search for another centralised power solution for my rig, be it based off of a USB power bank or a V-lock battery.

If you have rigged up a solution, please let me know :)

 

I hope this will save some time for others who are looking into the same issue.

 

 



#2
fallout666

fallout666
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  • Locationcfl area of space coast

well we just got update for it and have to send camera in for $200 to get new firmware for it. unless you got Z6 video kit. 







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