Flying with Photography Equipment

Flying with Photography Equipment

Being a photographer with clients across the U.S means flying with my photography equipment. I prefer to keep all my camera gear on me as a carry on while traveling since my equipment is particularly fragile and valuable. I have heard too many horror stories about musicians with broken guitars or photographers with broken lenses. Since carry on space is limited to one smaller bag and a personal item, I take great care in picking the equipment that goes with me to provide the mobility I need with the quality work I demand from myself. If I am on a small plane, occasionally I have to gate check my Tamrac Speedroller bag. As tough as it is, I have indeed had some damage to my gear due to mishandling of the luggage underneath the plane. Here is an example – my backup camera 5D Mark II got a punch in the face and the top window is cracked. All works well but dangit guys, do you have to toss the bags?

5d mark II backup camera with a cracked window

So here is my travel gear:

Camera:

• Canon 5D Mark III SLR
  • shoots about a 23 meg raw file
  • makes it easy to bracket my exposures by setting it up in a custom function
  • not too heavy
  • tough as nails

Lenses

• Canon TSE 17mm f4 (tilt shift lens)
  • This is a great lens for making small spaces look a bigger. The trade off is that when you shift down, items in the foreground start getting distorted.
• Canon TSE 24mm f3.5 (tilt shift lens)
  • This one is great for exteriors
• Canon 24-105mm f f4.5 zoom lens
  • I was carrying the 24-70 f2.8 lens but it is so heavy, I opted for this one
  • Versatile and optics are great

Accessories

• Two Canon 600 EX RT speedlights
  • Canon ST-E3-RT Wireless trigger for the speedlights. Though you can use one of these speedlights on the camera to control the off camera 600, it sure is nice to have the ST-E3-RT trigger to control both of them off camera. And it is lighter and easier to use as a master trigger.
• Manfrotto Neotec Pro tripod and Manfrotto with 494 ball head
  • Nothing is more valuable to me than this tripod. It sets up and breaks down by just pulling and pushing on the legs. No clips to undo first! It is expensive but worth it.
• Small speedlight modifiers
  • When I am spot lighting with my speedlights, I need a modifier to soften the shadows and spread the light. Otherwise I will get hard shadows as the light falls off the subject.
• Cam Ranger software on my Ipad
  • For remote camera triggering. This is very helpful to be able to walk around a room and trigger the camera to shoot while I am holding a speed light to light a specific area. I can see the image on my Ipad, make f stop or shutter speed changes from the ipad and keep moving around, not having to go back to the camera after each shot to look at the results.

And of course I bring my laptop loaded with Photoshop and Photomatix so I can process the photos on the plane.

Here it is laid out:

Camera gear for traveling

And packed up in the bag

travel photography gear packed up in the Tamrac travel bag