Running on Sunshine: How I Charge My Filmmaking and Photography Kit with Solar

Here’s a question I get asked a lot when people see my setup: is that a solar panel on your roof? Yes. Yes it is. And no, I’m not about to launch into a lecture about saving the planet — though that’s a solid bonus. This is about something much more practical: keeping batteries charged, kit running, and not getting caught short on a location in the middle of South Yorkshire with a flat drone battery and two hours of shoot left.

Let me break down how I’ve got things set up — both in the office here in Doncaster and out on the road with my mobile Jackery rig.

The Office Setup

The office runs off a solar panel array on the roof feeding into a power station. It’s not a full off-grid situation — I’m still connected to the mains — but during daylight hours, the solar is doing most of the heavy lifting.

What that means in practice is that the bulk of my daily charging runs for free. Camera batteries, the Leica Q2, drone batteries, laptop, hard drives, audio recorders — all of it cycles through the power station throughout the day. By the time I’m wrapping up an edit in the evening, everything is topped up and ready for the next shoot.

The power station sits on my desk. It’s quiet, it’s clean, and it means I’ve got a reliable reserve if there’s a power cut — which, if you’ve ever been mid-render on a DaVinci project, you’ll appreciate more than most.

The panels do their job without me having to think about it. That’s the point. It’s not a hobby project. It’s infrastructure.

The Mobile Jackery Rig

The office setup is great, but a big chunk of my work happens on location. Documentary shoots, community projects, projection mapping installs — I’m out of the office as much as I’m in it. That’s where the Jackery comes in.

I run a portable solar panel that folds down flat and connects straight to the Jackery power station. The whole thing fits in the back of the car alongside the rest of the kit. I can deploy it wherever I’m parked up, point it at the sky, and it starts feeding the station while I’m working.

On a full day shoot — say something like Building Bridges or a long day out with the Leica — I can run through a serious number of charge cycles. Drone batteries especially. The Jackery handles them without breaking a sweat, and by the time I’ve finished one setup and moved to the next, the batteries I’ve swapped out are already getting a charge back in.

In practice, it means I rarely think about battery capacity as a limiting factor any more. That shift in mindset is genuinely useful when you’re in the middle of something that matters.

What I’m Actually Charging

To give you a concrete sense of the load, here’s what’s typically going through either setup on a working day:

• Leica Q2 — one of the great cameras, but it goes through batteries, especially in cold weather or when you’re working quickly

• Drone batteries — multiple cycles if it’s an aerial day

• Cinema camera batteries — main body and backup

• Zoom audio recorder

• Laptop — usually a long editing session running straight after a shoot day

• Phone and iPad — monitoring, playback, client comms

• Canon R5Cs x2 including 2 vlock batteries

• Portable LED panels — when I’m running small lights on location

It adds up. Having solar cover that load — at the desk or in the field — makes a real difference to running costs across a year.

Why Bother?

Honestly? The economics made sense almost immediately. Filmmaking and photography kit is power-hungry. Batteries are expensive to replace if you’re pushing them hard without proper charge cycles. Running everything through solar means the charging is consistent, I’m not hammering wall sockets across multiple extension leads like some kind of low-budget touring band, and the power station acts as a buffer between the panels and the kit.

The mobile Jackery rig in particular is something I’d recommend to any working filmmaker doing long location days. The cost of a decent portable panel and a power station is nothing compared to the flexibility it gives you. One less thing to stress about on a shoot day is worth its weight.

If you want to know more about the specific kit I’m running — panel wattage, station capacity, what I’d change with hindsight — drop me a message or find me on Instagram. Happy to talk through it.

And if you haven’t already, check out Beyond the Lens — my year-long Leica Q2 photography project — over in the shop. Three hundred and sixty-five days of images. All shot on solar-charged batteries. Well. Mostly.

Wayne Sables is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and digital artist based in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Operating under Wayne Sables Project since 2006.