PD150 Lost Power

[JPaul]

The other night when my son & I were about to video with 2 cams, both Sony PD-150s, his cam had the message "Set Clock". I reset the clock and several other settings that had gone to default, most importantly having to change DV Cam to DV SP, otherwise the tape would run out.

My problem was the internal battery had gone dead. I contacted Sony and to replace the vanadium-lithium (internal) battery requires disassembly and soldering in a new battery, something I would not tackle. Obviously, the cost would be high just to replace the battery, so I've decided to wait until it needs servicing.

Since I'm not longer using my 3 cameras professionally, I've decided to use the workaround. As long as either the AC or main external battery are hooked up, all the settings will hold. So for now, I will simply reset the cam every time I use it if the power has been disrupted.

I think a contributing factor was disuse. The 150 is my newest cam (2002). The older one is fine (2001) as well as my Canon (2000). The 2002 cam had not been used for several months so the internal battery went dead and could not recover. Best advice - if you have cams with hard to replace internal batteries that you are not using much, you may want to put a charge on them from time to time.