Photographers! This Loophole Will Calm Your Worst Air Travel Nightmare!

so by the time this video goes live I'll be in route to the lofiton islands in Norway for a workshop which I'm super excited about as I really haven't been able to do much in the way of winter photography at all this year in Norway is sure to solve that and deliver and the topic of air travel with photography gear is it's something that comes up rather frequently as commercial air travel especially lately has become a stressful source of anxiety for many myself included and add expensive camera gear into the mix well that's a complete recipe for insurmountable concern and anyone who has ever flown to a destination where photography was the main purpose will 100 be able to relate to everything in this week's episode so over the course of the past eight years just about every flight I've taken has resulted in me attempting a slightly different approach to the the way that I handle getting my camera gear from point A to point B in the safest possible Manner and after many tweaks and trials I finally got a system in place now that that has worked very well for me and well and what I mean by works well is that this system creates as stress-free of an environment is humanly possible and when it comes to airline travel that is by far the ultimate goal for myself so to jump right into it the easy part as far as what do you put in your checked bag or what do I put in my checked bag that's easy obviously you put your clothes and stuff I'm not going to go through all that but the photography stuff that I put in my check bag is it's really not a whole lot it's basically my tripod my filters and the ball head for my tripod I used to carry my tripod on the side of my backpack and then put the ball head inside of the the back but now I no longer do that because that just adds a lot of bulk and it makes the overall size of your carry-ons substantially larger so I now check my tripod I check the the ball head and I put the filters I have a nice protective pouch I should probably have that up here but um maybe I'll overlay some b-roll so you can see that but a nice protective pouch for all my filters and then I kind of bury it around the clothes just to keep it safe but um that is really and I guess a headlamp you know that's something that is is kind of Photography related gloves those are things that if for whatever reason my check bag does get lost those if I lose those things although losing a tripod would stink it's not going to completely ruin my trip I will still be able to move on with my photography without those items so I put those in my checked bag and that's kind of my thought track is if I do lose this bag what do I put in here that's not going to completely ruin my trip so that's just kind of the thought track I go through and then as far as the actual carry-on I use the the f-stop telopa which is a 50 liter pack and from my experience a 50 liter backpack you're starting to push the coin as far as what can easily fit in an overhead compartment now it depends on the size of the plane of course but from my experience a 40 liter pack you're going to be completely fine in most planes even with a 50 liter pack you're going to be completely fine in most planes but I have gotten onto some smaller flights that are smaller planes that I have encountered a few issues but my pack is that the telopa 50 liter and I put all the the standard camera stuff in there in my carry-on pack so these are things like you know your camera bodies your lenses uh what else batteries because you can't you can't check batteries you want to keep those with you um anything related to to charging so this little pack right here and this is kind of part of the system that I go through it's a it's all a modular system in case the inevitable happen happens where you are told at the last minute that you have to check your bag what do you do so I keep everything in these modular little packs so this orange one here this is everything that's related to charging so everything in here has to do with either charging my laptop charging uh cameras backup Drive various cores charging my iPhone charging my iWatch anything related to charging in electricity is right here and backup so I know that I can just grab this one pouch and I will have everything that I need now the reason I don't check this is because this is Mission critical in my opinion because if I lose this I can't use any of my camera gear well I guess I could for a very limited amount of time but once all the batteries die I'm not going to have any way to charge any of that stuff up so I have to be able to have a functioning phone I have to have my headphones on a flight I have to be able to charge my computer I try to charge cameras so this has to come with me at all times very very important this right here is another modular pack this is for my drone so I have the the mavic 3 Pro right here which I'm bringing to Norway and I uh have everything in this one bag so everything in here is related to the Drone filters Chargers an extra battery the controller all of that is right here and I keep both of these on the top of my bag and in of my telopa in the top kind of eggshell or harsh what do you call the brain of the bag at the very very top I'll put some b-roll in here so you can see that but I put those on there and then in the actual camera body or camera area of the bag and the internal camera unit the ICU that's where all the camera bodies the lenses everything else goes right in there so I know we've all been in this situation where you're waiting to board your flight and you're starting to go through your zones and if you're anything like me you're always in zone 10 or Zone 20 you're always the last to board and that's always kind of the the real stressful situation for me is a lot of times when you're in one of those higher Zone numbers or you're one of the people that gets too bored last a lot of those overhead compartments are already taken up so when you have a 50 liter pack or a 40 liter pack and you go to uh and it's finally your time to board and you go to give your ticket to get on the plane you're kind of running the a little a risk of I'm saying you know overhead compartments are starting to fill up your bag isn't going to fit we're going to have to check it here and that is by far for a photographer at least for me personally I don't want to speak for anyone else that is the the the the ultimate struggle that is what keeps me up at night before flights so what do you do in that scenario and it has happened to me a couple times especially on those smaller flights so and what's funny is I I've gone through this whole like little dance where you know as you're approaching the the person who's going to take your ticket you know you kind of turn a little bit this way to make the profile of your bag on your back as small as possible I strap the the I tighten the straps down on the pack as well to try and make it look as small as I possibly can but kind of turning a little bit to give them the ticket to kind of Shield the bag and get on it was always something that it usually works pretty well but every once in a while they'll say it's happened to me I think three times now it's like sir we don't have room for your bag we're gonna have to check it and you immediately just it's it's a very nerve-wracking scenario so what do you do in that situation so this is kind of the the the system that is really they worked well for me so I have my carry-on bag and that's my camera backpack but I also have this personal item here almost all flights will allow you to carry a carry-on bag and a personal item and this is the perfect size for a personal item this is from a fjall raven just got this um actually for for Christmas I was using a an older I think stop one is my as my personal item but this is my new one and it holds my my laptop my uh my headphones right here any kind of pens pencils but it's also got a pretty large area right here as well so the beauty of this is so I'm going to get on my flight they tell me your bag's too big Mark the overhead compartments are filling up you're going to have to check it so once I compose myself and pull myself together I said okay Mark let's solve this problem the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to open up the brain or the top portion of my camera bag and I'm going to take these two things out because these cannot be checked I need these and the thing about the Drone is if I if I lost the Drone it would not ruin my photography trip the drone's expensive so I don't want to lose that so anyway I'm gonna put this in here I put this in here and then I can seal this completely up like this and this is my personal item so that problem is solved so these are in this bag here and everything is good there and then what I love about the f-stop bags and a lot of camera bags have this where you can take the ICU out of the pack but what makes f-stops in my opinion the best is this this is an empty one that I have but you pull this out of your camera bag and just imagine all of this is filled with camera gear I would just flip this flap over and then zip it up foreign like this and it's got a strap right here so now this becomes my carry-on and this is substantially smaller than the actual backpack so this becomes my carry-on and this is now my personal item and then I can take my empty bag and they can check that and that right there has created such peace of mind for me and like I said I've done this I've gone to the same this has happened to me three times now and it has worked flawlessly because this right here they can always find a spot in on the the overhead compartment to fit this in the plane and this is all the expensive camera gear I've got my charging cables I've got my drone in my personal um uh my personal item that goes underneath the seat and everything is still with me the only thing that's not with me now is just the camera bag and everything that's in that camera bag is not going to be a mission critical type of a thing another reason why I think f-stops icus are the best is because they are of course they're very they're hard shelled it's got a nice um padded zip top and it also has the handle here so it's very simple to take out and it's just it's just like having another piece of luggage um shimodas I think work very well the only problem I have with shimoto's is this is the little bag that the ICU goes into and it's just like a little flimsy bag and you stick the ICU inside of this bag zip it up and then you have the little handle here so it's not quite as as I guess durable or robust of a solution as this is there's no bag or anything you have to put this in this is it right here so I really like the way this works so that's kind of the the setup that I go through and what's really cool too is even if you don't have an issue and you're able to take your bag on your flight and what's happened to me is I stuff my bag in the overhead compartment this is before I used to carry a personal item I'd have everything in that camera bag and I just cram it into the the overhead compartment and then I'm when I'm on my flight I don't know maybe three or four hours into the flight I want to get out my computer I want to get out my headphones or I want to get anything out of that camera bag to to occupy time while I'm flying it is such a pain to get that big bag out of the overhead compartment to get anything out of it to you know keep myself entertained on the flight so having that personal items back here that has like your laptop your your your headphones a book or you know anything in there having that with you that you can put underneath the seat is very very nice so you don't ever have to try and get something out of your you know maxed out camera bag that's stuffed into the overhead compartment so that is kind of the the setup that I go through it doesn't have to be you know this type of a system here I think what's most important is that you have a personal items bag and everything is modular so basically all of my important camera gear is in these three modules and being able to access those and quickly get them out and stick what you need to in here and then carry the large ICU with you or bring it onto the plane is that's really it it's not super it's not rocket science but it took a little while to kind of come to that conclusion that that is what works best for me now if you ask me in a year um am I still doing it I don't know but uh lately this is the setup I've gone through and it does work really well so I hope that that gives someone possibly an idea as to uh how to get their camera gear from point A to point B in the safest and stress-free scenario as possible if you have any questions about airline travel or getting gear here or there please leave those in the comments section below and I'll do my best to get back in touch with you as soon as possible if you did enjoy the video if you could give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed already and um next time you are traveling anywhere I hope you have a great trip safe travels of course and I will see you all next Wednesday hi

Channel: Mark Denney

Views: 111,136

Keywords: landscape photography, landscape, photography, mark denney, airplane travel photography, how to travel with camera gear on a plane, how to travel with camera gear, how to fly with camera gear, traveling with expensive camera gear, traveling with camera gear tsa, how to fly with camera gear on a plane, how to travel with a camera on a plane, traveling with photography equipment, flying with camera gear, flying with camera equipment, airline travel hacks, airline travel tips, camera

Id: bgZTwdl6ntE

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2023