Untangling Canon's asinine use of proprietary connectors in the AC-E6N AC power adapter

[koenkooi]

interesting.. one of the customer reviews describes the adaptor affecting the noise floor in every video:

"... Reviewed in Canada on October 23, 2018
Verified Purchase
I bought this for my Canon 5d mkiii in order to power it during longer recording sessions of audio/video demonstrations I'm making. Since these are demonstrations focusing on sound character the audio quality is a priority. I find it most convenient to simply run the audio source to the camera input rather than try to align the audio later in post. After recording several sessions I noticed a ground hum significantly louder than the noise floor in every video. This led me on a very tedious troubleshooting journey that lasted the past two nights. Only after hours and hours today it dawned on me that I should check the power instead of the audio chain. As soon as I put the battery in I had clean audio again repeatedly. Next I tried making sure everything was powered using the same ground reference but it made no difference. Since this power supply renders the camera's audio input useless I must give it one star, but it seems it should work fine strictly for video..."

That's a ground loop, which is something you should always check for when you have something connected both to ground and mains power. It's sadly not so easy to solve, in a on-stage setting you can usually plug every mains power into the same group/phase, but if you're recording from the back of the room with an audio line snaking to the front, you're out of luck.

 

[gwharton]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I put together a more elegant solution to this problem that cost very little.

Parts :

Hammond 1551MBK Enclosure - eBay
3.5mm Barrel 2.1mm pin 12V DC Socket - eBay
Schurter 4840.2220 12V DC Socket - Mouser

 

[josephandrews222]

...stopped here for a few minutes while looking for a thread about some unusual behavior with a 5DMk3 while shooting the recent lunar eclipse [it was working sort of fine but acting abnormally in the way it was metering (I think)]; after switching lenses a couple of times it is back to normal (I hope).

In the meantime, a short eclipse .gif made using hand-held images collected with M6Mk2/70-300 IS II gear--still recovering from the midnight-3am effort:



My experience with third-party battery grips, batteries, and a/c adapter-battery replacement gizmos has been virtually 100% positive, using batteries and grips for Rebel XT (350D), 40D, 5DMk3; M, M2, M10, M6 and M6Mk2, and a/c adaptors for 40D, 5DMk3 and M6Mk2. Third-party batteries for Powershot ELPH 300, S90 and S95 (this is at least a decade ago) were not as reliable and subject to swelling. It is important to read reviews for these sorts of purchases...it would be far simpler to just buy Canon. I don't mind skimming reviews while reading/learning about a whole range of things along the way.

The a/c adaptor for the 40D enables its usage as a webcam for at-home Zoom teaching; when mated to a 17-55 2.8 IS EF-S lens, the set-up (with fifteen year-old gear) produces Zoom imagery far superior to most any webcam (or iPad/iPhone for that matter), with side-by-side comparisons (even within the compressed Zoom signal) revealing the abysmal dynamic range of most webcams.

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(Somewhat) off-topic: I do not recommend third-party ink for Canon's wide format ink-jet printers. Canon's ink & paper live quite nicely together, in terms of print longevity.

On the other hand, at least for the Canon laser printer listed below, third-party toner cartridges works very well...

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And completely off-topic (but related to 5DMk3 issues): any recommendations for shutter count software?

Thanks for reading.