The Traveling Widower

Tag: Camera-gear

  • How to fit 50 lbs of stuff in a 25 lb bag

    Most of what I packed for the Road Scholars trip – no problem with a Subaru Forrester!

    As I alluded to in a previous post, this one will take a crack at explaining how I have been cramming everything you need for photography, kayaking, snorkeling, hiking and general purpose living for a long adventure, and meet the stringent baggage rules for airlines, small cruise ships and even worse, single engine planes. Yeah, some of the trips I’ll be going on are in remote places, and the only way to get there is on small planes. I even get to go on a float plane for one trip. That will be a real treat. 

    You have already seen photos of the camera gear I may bring along on a trip. As I mentioned, there is much more than just the cameras and lenses – there are lots of chargers, cables, extra batteries, memory cards, lens cleaning stuff – just a lot of extraneous but thankfully small objects that need to find a place somewhere in the luggage. I have four options now for packing camera gear in carry-on luggage:

    1. A Think Tank camera roller bag, which can hold pretty much all my stuff, including the GoPro, and it fits in all overhead storage, including commuter jets. I will never check in my camera bag – too much temptation for baggage handlers. The problem with this bag, is that I wind up with two roller bags in the airport until the big bag is checked. Awkward at best. The photo below illustrates how much you can fit in this bag – 2 camera bodies, the big lens and 3 others, the GoPro gear with plenty of room to spare for a laptop, books, a sweater. The weight with the gear below comes in at 17.5lbs.
    Think Tank photo roller bag.
    1. A LowePro backpack, which holds the same amount of gear as the roller bag, but it’s a real backpack with great back and shoulder support. It also fits in overhead storage, but weighs more than the roller bag. I have yet to use it, but likely will for the Antarctica trip. As you can see below, the backpack holds even more gear than the roller bag, and is comfortable to carry with padded shoulder straps and a real waste supporting hip belt. It too weighed in at 17.5 lbs. My only fear is that it might not fit in coach overhead compartments on smaller planes. I usually fly business/first class, so hopefully it will fit.
    LowePro Backpack – Tons of room
    1. A mid-sized back pack from Think Tank – this was the latest pack added to my collection, and can hold a limited amount of gear. If I bring the 500MM lens, I can fit one camera body, and maybe 2 other lenses. It also has limited space for the other stuff you like to bring along on carry-on luggage – meds, iPad, maybe a light sweater, batteries. I almost need to bring a second, small carry-on for that stuff. The proverbial small piece of luggage that fits under the seat in front of you. Where my big feet are supposed to go. As you can see in the photo below, there is a lot less room for gear in this pack – I can fit all the regular camera, gear, but not the GoPro case, and there is little room for extra stuff in the front pockets. But, it only weighs in at 14.5 lbs, and easily fits in any overhead compartment. Plus, I can use this as a pack for hiking.
    1. And last and least – a smaller LowePro camera pack, with even less space for cameras than the other bag. Good for a trip requiring only two smaller lenses, or just the 300MM and one camera body. It’s basically a day pack. 

    For my trips to-date; Option 4 worked fine for Colorado, since I only needed one body, and 2 smaller lenses; Option 1 worked best for the Galápagos Islands, where I carried pretty much everything I owned for this spectacular trip, where snorkeling and underwater photography were on the agenda; I struggled with packing for the Baja trip – I wanted to see if I could pack less, and wound up buying the in-between sized pack (Option 3) at the last minute (I like shopping at camera stores, almost better than REI). The new pack really was not large enough, and I wound up carrying all the extra stuff in the luggage, which was really full. But it worked. My next two trips will be easy – I’ll need the big lens and 2 bodies, so I’ll take Option 1 or 2, either of which should fit in overhead for all the flights. I hope. 

    One of the key factors to check for each option is the overall weight of the packed bags. Some international flights limit your carry-on weight. For the flight from Guayaquil Ecuador to the Galápagos Islands, I believe it was 19 lbs. The roller bag (#1) worked, but the big backpack (#2) did not. My trips next year will also be a problem, since both have really small planes to get to the final destination. I have not quite figured that one out yet.

    My solution for the carry-on weight problem, is to pack all the extraneous get (chargers, monopod, extensions sticks…pretty much everything but cameras and lenses, in the checked baggage. That seems to work.

    So how about the rest of the stuff you may ask? That depends on the trip. Life was easier for packing before my wife passed – we had two large checked bags plus two carry-ons, and were able to distribute most everything we needed including SCUBA gear, my large shoes, all of my wife’s fancy clothing (I dressed a little more casually). There was always enough room. She had more shoes than me, but hers fit inside mine. We were a great match. Now I’m limited to one reasonably large bag for everything but the camera gear. Bummer. But, by figuring out how much clothing I really need, I can leave more of the space for hiking/snorkeling necessities. The magic key is “on-board laundry”! We did this on our one long cruise to the South Pacific – we paid for the laundry package, and had clothes cleaned almost every day. That left plenty of room for other things. I did that as well on the last Geographic cruise. It’s not that expensive, and relieves a lot of packing pressure.

    Fortunately, for the trips I’ve been on so far, I have been able to just bring very light layers, enough for getting there and back, and a few days worth on board before I send stuff off for laundering. Plenty of room for fins, mask, wet suit, and other items needed for excursions. Trips to colder climates (Alaska, Antarctica) will not be a problem either since I will not be snorkeling – I’ll just need more layers, and some of my expedition level hats and gloves. National Geographic provides a parka and fleece layer for the Antarctica trip, and their are outfitters that provide boots for both trips. No need to try and pack heavy footware for those trips. I’m not sure how I’ll get the heavy parka home though – shipping from Santiago Chile?

    Here is all I packed for the Galapagos Islands – that included snorkel gear (fins, mask, etc), a thin wet suit + other neoprene things, water shoes, light deck shoes, a hiking stick and enough clothing for 6 days to cover travel back/forth to US and a few days on board. The small backpack fit in the luggage. And I wore my huge hiking boots on the flight.

    For the Baja trip, most everything was the same except I had fewer camera components – no large lens and extra body since I thought the whales would be close (sniff). I also left the Sea Life camera behind, and just brought the GoPro. Which I never used (sniff). I wound up repacking the camera gear in the new mid-sized back (Option 3) instead of the smaller bag shown in the photo.

    And then there are auto trips. No problem packing on those, especially with a large SUV acting as my traveling closet. For the long Road Scholars trip, I basically emptied out my closet into the back of my car. Well, not exactly, but I did have a lot of stuff in the car. Plus I could carry all of my camera gear without worrying about weight restrictions. Same goes for whale watching, hummingbird chasing, and anyplace else I decide to drive to this summer.

    One of my trips in 2026 will be a major packing challenge – Baja Jones. For this trip, I’ll be sleeping in a hut on the beach along Laguna Ojo de Libre, which is in the middle of nowhere, Mexico (I upgraded to a hut with an en-suite shower…woo hoo). To get to this very remote place on the Baja peninsula, I will first drive to San Diego (a favorite place), stay overnight in a hotel, and the tour will begin the next morning with a limo drive to Ensenada, Mexico. Assuming our countries are not at war by then, there we will board a single engine Cessna for a 2.5 hour flight which hopefully will land safely in Guerrero Negro. There is a single runway airport there – it looks like it is paved.  I’m not sure what the weight restrictions will be, but I doubt if I’ll be able to carry too much. I’ll probably have more weight dedicated to camera gear than clothing – no hiking, no snorkeling or swimming, so bare minimum for clothing, enough for four days in the hut. Everyone will probably smell like salt weather and whale breath after a day anyway, so who cares what you wear. I’ll have fresh clothes waiting in my traveling closet when we return to San Diego.

    The Kodiak Island (or How to Not be Eaten by a HUGE Bear) trip will likely be a bit simpler – this is a photographers trip, so they will expect the 8 passengers to be carrying a lot of heavy camera gear. Plus, I’m guessing we can leave a suitcase at the hotel in Kodiak, so I can just bring what’s needws for the four days on the fishing boat. That will be a very strange trip – sleeping in a converted shipping container, with a shared bathroom for four people, and sleeping in bunk beds. Not a lot of room for luggage, or anything else for that matter. No laundry on this trip. I hope my roomate does not snore. Or is an axe murderer. Something else to worry about.

    So, I’m definitely learning the ins and outs of photography travel – I hope to have it down by the end of this year, and continue to slim down what I take for each trip going forward. Maybe someone will come up with spray-on clothing.

  • My other hobby – Photography

    Now that I’ve launched this blog, and have actual real viewers and subscribers (amazing), I find myself thinking about new topics to write about during my “in between trip time”, and I came up with one that covers one of the main themes for doing this blog  – photography. Nothing too technical, just how I got into it, and my current kit.

    I’ve always been interested in photography, even as a kid. My parents foolishly let me use their Brownie Instamatic once in a while until they noticed that I would shoot an entire role of film on the same subject…like a statue at the United Nations building. That ended my initial childhood experience. In college, I had a friend who was a very talented photographer, though a little on the strange side when it came to what he photographed and the prints he made in the darkroom. I learned a little bit about SLR cameras and darkroom techniques, but not enough to buy my own camera.

    Fast forward to graduate school i I had another friend who ran the photo lab for the geology department, and once again had the opportunity to learn and maybe try it out on my own. Too bad I didn’t – there were so many opportunities in geology field trips and field camps for photography…like climbing the Grand Teton. One of the students had a camera, and got a classic shot of me, holding on for dear life to a rope to keep from sliding down the Middle Teton Glacier. He was supposed to be holding on to the rope. I think he was hoping to get a sequence of me sliding to my doom. I survived.

    How not to cross a glacier…that’s me It was a very long way down

    Finally, after all these missed opportunities, I had access to a real SLR, and also a Nikon underwater camera. They were not mine though….my soon to be wife owned them, and let me use them. I brought the Nikon along on the summer field camp I was a Teaching Assistant on, and shot a few roles of slides. It was a start.

    Over the years, my wife and I both dabbled in photography. After a rock climbing accident, I began to take it more seriously, at my wife’s urging, in order to keep me off the rocks – I built my own darkroom, joined clubs, went off on wildlife photography trips, and of course, bought a lot of gear, replacing my fixation with rock climbing toys. Those were the days before digital photography and before phones became cameras. I really enjoyed making prints – I still have a few framed ones on the walls of my current abode 

    Once digital photography appeared, and phone photography became common,  we both invested in new technology, each buying new kits based on Nikon. I eventually bought a 500MM telephoto for wildlife photography, which was my focus (no pun intended) for many years. My wife was always more interested in capturing interesting scenes in parks and cities, and sometimes just of people. When Sony started producing high-end digital cameras, we both traded our Nikon gear for Sony, and have stayed with their cameras going forward. 

    So what am I shooting with now? My wife of course had the higher end camera – a Sony A7RII, which has a 44MP sensor, the largest at the time (2016). You can enlarge those photos to wall size. I had an even older model, the A7II, with a 24MP sensor. A good workhorse of a camera. Both were now way behind current technology – so much has changed, including AI features built into the chip. We had a good range of lenses, which we shared – 50-300, 28-105, and a few other lenses, all Sony. When Jan passed, I inherited her A7RII, which became my primary camera body. Most of the pictures I’ve posted in the blog to-date were shot with this camera, except for the last trip. I had been itching to buy a new, longer lens, but being frugal (or cheap) I was holding off on the investment, even after missing lots of good photo opportunities on the Baja trip. That was until the current administration’s Independence Day came along – the potential for a 39% tariff on Japanese products, and a major increase in price made me pull the trigger on buying the new lens, a 100-500MM Tamron telephoto. Very heavy, but manageable. And then after the whale watch trip, I decided to just go ahead and buy a new camera body with superior focusing, the Sony A7IV. The shots it takes were remarkable in clarity…no more wasted slightly out-of-focus shots, and the shutter bursts are 10 frames per second is great for fast moving subjects, like hummingbirds and whales. I used this camera exclusively on my last trip to the Utah parks.

    All my toys

    So unless I win a lottery, this will have to hold me for a while in terms of cameras and lenses. Here’s a picture of the whole kit and kaboodle – I take all of this on some of the trips (Alaska, Galapagos, but have to cut back on other trips based on luggage size and weight restrictions. That’s a lot of weight for carry-on, especially on smaller planes.

    But that’s not all I have to lug around. Some trips/subjects require more stability, like hummingbirds, shore birds, sea otters….and that requires lugging a tripod or monopod along. The tripod only works for car trips – hard to carry that on airplanes, and impossible to use in small boats like the Zodiacs that National Geographic uses. So that’s where the monopod comes in. That was another Independence Day purchase. It’s hard to find any high-end camera gear made in the USA.

    Tripod, monopod (with feet), GoPro extension rod, extension rod with feet

    But wait, there is more! I also have underwater / action cameras. I have a GoPro 13, and a Sealife underwater camera with a frame, a big U/W light, and a large wide angle lens. Unfortunately I no longer need the Sealife since I’m not allowed to Scuba Dive anymore – when your cardiologist says NO, you listen). The GoPro is fine for snorkeling, and is easy to pack.

    What is not in either picture are the batteries and chargers needed for all the cameras. Or SSD drives I bring along to backup the photos. There is just a pile of stuff that you need to pack and haul around for photography. Not complaining…just wishing I had a llama sometimes. I do have some nice photo backpacks…another post will cover that.

    And finally (almost), there is one more camera I use frequently on these trips. It’s a Pixel 8 phone. Before going on the Galapagos Island trip, I watched a video on photography by one of the top National Geographic photographers, giving advice on what to bring on these trips. He said sometimes the best camera is the one that is frequently in your hand. Your phone. He has published many photos from his iPhone. The Geographic photographers on both trips gave lecture on phone photography as well.

    So do you really need all this “stuff”? Depends on how serious you are about photography, and what you intend to do with them. And how much you want to carry this heavy, awkward gear around on trips. My wife gave up on ‘real’ cameras a long time ago, and only used her iPhone. We were going to buy an underwater housing for it, so she could use it diving or snorkeling. For me, it’s my hobby, so I’ll continue to use both. Plus, I like shopping in camera stores and buying new toys. If REI had a camera department, I’d never shop anywhere else other than Whole Foods for groceries. My life would be so much easier.

    So this post has been all about the gear. How do you pack all this stuff for a trip? I’ll get to that in another post.