Pixiq

As an adventure photographer there are times when you need to pull out the big guns when the weather conditions (or the airline baggage handlers) get rough. For those conditions I use Pelican Cases. They are hardened plastic cases that you can basically throw off a cliff without killing your gear. Rain, wind  or sand are not a problem. The only downside is that they are not light. My favorite Pelican cases are the 1490 Laptop briefcase and the 1510  and 1610 rolling cases.

I use the 1490 laptop case for those times when I know my laptop my get abused on an assignment and especially when others might be moving my gear for me on an extended expedition. It is heavy and cumbersome but it protects the laptop and hard drives. The 1510 is a great case when I need more protection than a photo backpack and want to make sure nothing happens to my photo equipment when I am headed into a location with bad weather like Patagonia, where it always seems to be raining. It can hold a significant amount of gear but is still the perfect carry on size for air travel. And if for some reason I have to check it I am not worried about my gear. I have the 1510 with the padded dividers, but sometimes I use it without the padded dividers and just put in various camera bags like the Toploader Pro and individual lenses in the LowePro lens cases. I have also used this to carry my Elinchrom Quadra lighting kit, which fits into the case perfectly with two heads and two complete power packs. 

For my lighting gear I use the larger 1610 rolling cases if I need to take lighting gear on location. These cases weigh 22 pounds without anything in them so they aren’t the most airline friendly cases but they do give me peace of mind that my expensive lighting gear is not going to get destroyed when flying. I normally have my Elinchrom Ranger strobe system in one of these - one power pack with an extra battery and two strobe heads along with reflectors, Skyport and Pocket Wizard transceivers, cords, light meter, etc. With all of that in the case it weighs 70 pounds and draws a lot of attention.I will admit traveling with the 1610 rolling case is a royal pain. Customs documents detailing all the gear you are flying with is a must as you will get asked for those papers at customs check points when you return from a foreign country. And you will have to pay extra to check this bag unless you are very careful to pack lightweight gear into it. For me paying extra to check a bag isn’t that big of a deal as it seems to happen on every assignment. If it is possible to rent the lighting gear in a nearby city then I much prefer to rent it and not have to deal with this case when traveling but that isn’t always the case. I took this case with my lighting gear to Patagonia and back because I wanted to do some high end portraits of adventure racers down there. It was with me on location in some of the roughest remote country you can imagine - through the rain, wind, salt spray (from the ocean) and everything else it survived just fine and protected my lighting gear with no fuss. It did come back with a few serious chucks of plastic missing from the corners of the case but it is still in great shape and continues to work just fine. 

A lighter option would be to use the Tenba Air Cases or the Lightware cases, which also do a great job when it come to protecting lighting gear (or any gear that you travel with or need to ship) but they are not as tough as the hard plastic Pelican cases nor do they protect my gear in intense wet conditions like the Pelican cases do. Hence my use of the Pelican cases. 

Tenba Stand Bag: To get my lightstands, large umbrellas, softboxes and tripods to the location I use the Tenba CCT46 TriPak Car Case. It is basically a big long padded bag with a zipper down the middle and fully loaded it can easily weigh 50 or 60 pounds. These are nothing fancy but work just fine. In the future I need to look into rolling stand bags. I have seen a few that Kata makes that look really nice. With these bags it is always an issue of weight and trying to keep the weight of the bag itself to a minimum since all of the heavy gear going into it will add up pretty quickly and of course that is an issue when the airlines only allow 50 pounds per bag without overage charges. 

This post is an excerpt from my Fall 2010 Newsletter. If you like this article and would like to see more check out the back issues of my newsletter. 

Click here to read Part 1 of this article.