Being a photographer is tough to carry camera gear on your long travelling journey. Because while travelling there are various situations in which your camera gear might get damaged or go missing. As a result, the damage is difficult to recover, and it cost too much.

Here in this blog, we mainly discuss the ways in which you can travel safely with your camera gears. So, let’s discuss the ways in which you can carry your camera gears safely:

Carry What You Really Need

Usually, travellers do these mistakes as they carry more than they need on their travelling journey. So, bring only those gears that you need.

It’s really alluring to cram every lens into your bag with a thought that you might need it. Believe me! It’s not a good idea. The less you carry, the less you have to look after, and a lot easier for you to carry your camera gears.

Carry It With You

When you are travelling through flight, avoid keeping your camera in checked luggage. Or you are a traveller with professional photography work. In that case, you have to carry multiple cameras with you, and you can set up your camera in locked Pelican cases. But for rest 99%, it’s absolutely no to keep cameras in checked luggage.

Instead of carrying your camera in an old backpack, I recommend you to get a camera bag that supports a removable camera storage compartment. In this way, you can keep your camera gears safe in checked luggage. But make sure that your baggage must fulfill the airline baggage requirement.

It happened to me in one of my air travel, when I’m taking almost every camera gear with my clothing. I booked my ticket to Barcelona in an Aeromexico flight. After completing my packing, my friend suggested me to check the baggage policy of the flights. Later I realized that I was carrying 4.4lbs more weight as per the flight baggage policy.

Try To Avoid Original Camera Box

Always remember that, if you are carrying a camera in its original bag through an airport then it might be an invitation to a suspicious person waiting to grab and steal your camera quickly.

So you may either re-wrap the original bag with a plain brown wrapping paper or you can use the different bag with good quality material and different appearance than the original box. Thereby it won’t alert thieves that an expensive camera is in the box.

Get Your Gear Insured

In spite of all your efforts, your camera gear can still come to harm during the travel. Like a passenger might carelessly drop the camera bag, someone might take your gear during the security check or any other situations which are out of your control.

In such situations, insurance policy is one thing that provides protection to your camera gears. As per the camera worth, it can be easily covered in the travel insurance policy. If you have a lot of camera gears or expensive gears, then you can opt for specific photographers policy.

Pack It Properly

While packing the camera, you have to make sure that you have packed it tightly. You definitely don’t want your camera to be broken while going to the airport and jostling the bag in a rush as you have to carry it on to the airplane.

Prefer to use the padded camera bag having the different compartment for the camera body, lenses, flash units and the other accessories. Or, to keep the padding and original camera box and save the money and repack the camera in an original box while preparing for the journey.

Pack Lens Separately

Pack the camera and its lenses separately. If any stress comes to the lens housing to the camera positioning inside the bag, it could damage the gentle threads that connect the camera and lenses properly.

Pack the lens and body separately. For this, you can use the capes with both the units. The caps must be in the original box of your camera.

Smaller Is Better

You have to make sure that the camera bag is portable to carry on the plane. In this way, you can avoid paying the extra cost to the airline to carry the bag. Even the TSA requests that you don’t need to send the electronic equipment and lose the batteries.

If possible, you need to make sure that the camera gets properly fits into the bag, and it is easy to carry.

Keep Extras

Always keep an extra battery with you while going through the security check. Sometimes, during the security check security personnel may ask you to turn down the battery.

It doesn’t happen all the time but, prefer to keep an extra battery with you.

Keep Your Bag in Sight

Just like the other people, you may also put your bag in the compartment above the sear. After all, it’s the closest. Though it is close to you, it is not always possible to keep an eye on your bag.

When you fly and travel by plane, the best place to carry the bag is keep it on the other side of the airplane, just a row ahead so that you can keep an eye on your bag.

Check Your Tripod

As per the TSA guidelines, you can bring the tripods on the board, and most of the airport around the globe follow the TSA guidelines. But, not every security personnel have the same way of checking the baggage. So, you need to take care of your belongings.

Prefer to pack your tripod in the checked luggage. Even some of the heavy accessories such as flash and bulky chargers as these are much less likely to target by the thieves than lenses or camera and even add a lot of weight in carrying on.

Understand these points and next time when you travel you can carry your camera gears safely. And, don’t forget to read the baggage policies and related rule and regulation. Also, do proper baggage planning before you travel with your camera gears or go through this “Guide To Sustainable Baggage Planning” blog it might help you with your baggage planning.

Have a Safe Travel!