Travelling With Camera Gear

Lately, I’ve read a few more stories of photographers having their camera bag weighed prior to checking in or boarding an airplane. It doesn’t take long these days to get over the weight limit by the time you have a few lenses, a camera body or two, batteries, phone, and so on. You get the picture. With an extensive trip coming up, I have been wondering how to tackle this potential problem. Last thing you want is to be forced to check-in your camera bag.

ScotteVest Travel Vest comes to the rescue. I had read a bit about it on David duChemin’s blog, pixelatedimage:blog. Most of the photo vests that I have come across all look very ordinary. My ScotteVest will actually get used even when I am not travelling with camera gear. It is super comfortable to wear, it is made with a very nice fabric and has pockets galore. As such, the Travel Vest is not specifically designed for photographers but with the deep pockets that it has, you can fit a lot of gear and still don’t look like a geeky photographer 🙂

Off I went to the ScotteVest web site. Checked out the sizes, colours, made my choice, put in the order. It was very easy. Now, I just had to wait for it to arrive. It takes a bit longer to get down to Australia but still got here within a week. It got here nicely packaged. A catalogue was included. My first impression when unpacking is was that it looked very stylish and comfortable. Slipped it on and liked it from the word go.

As I started exploring the 22 pockets, I found that ScotteVest have included a little card in each pocket. These little cards give you hints as to what you can put in each pocket. Each card is actually different, a nice touch.

How much gear will it actually take? I put it on and loaded it up. Here is what I put in: lenses – 70-200 f/2.8, 12-24, 28mm, 50mm, electronics – mobile phone, ipod, CF cards, 2 spare batteries, misc – two pens, wallet, moleskin notepad, passport, magazine. I figured that the whole thing weighted close to 4 kgs! I still had some empty pockets.

Now I’m safe when travelling. If I get asked to weigh in my camera bag, I can off load the heavy lenses to my Travel Vest. Even with all the above gear that I put in the vest, it still felt comfortable. Sure, it looks like I have put on a few kgs but it still doesn’t look bulky.

The Travel Vest comes in three different colours (Desert Sand, Red Rock, Black Lava), in men (small to XXX-large) and women(small to XX-large) sizes and sells for $100USD.

Tip: when putting the lenses in the pockets, take the lens hoods off, it makes it easier to put the lenses in your pockets.

Highly recommend to travelling photographers.