I travel a bit . no quite a lot. last year I had 32 flights around NZ and oversea’s  which is sounds nice but with air travel today  its 32 flights of stress and part of the problem is camera gear.

I travel gear for my job it is expensive, heavy and hard to transport . and to top it off I seem to get hit with excess baggage fees as well and its getting harder and harder to carry on camera gear , (which is fair enough the user  should pay  ) last years excess baggage total was $2456 which is quite a bit over a year  so this year Im changing the way I work.

Some my plan is travel lighter and start re investing in lighter gear for travel , so carbon fibre  tripods  smaller camera kits and as part my travel kit and I have also changed camera bags , sounds funny I know but its a bit scarey when you weigh a camera bag and work out how heavy it is  some of my think tank bags are almost 4kg before I have anything in them . I have been a big fan of think tank bags  , but my supplier Pro Gear have just started to stock a new range of bags called fstop http://fstopgear.com  and they have changed how I operate , first big bonus is that they are light very light so that saves me over  2 kg just like that  ( on some airlines you pay via the KG up to $40 a kg so it mounts up pretty quick )second is that the a a use a system called ICU which a like small boxes that fit the bag and it also means they are interchangable  so if I need a backback for a job I just slip in out of the roller and into the back back or I have different kits set up so if I need a video kit its all in the icu I just change it over and away I go , simple but a great solution , all though not perfect the one complaint I have is that there are no clear see through pockets on the inside of the bag where you could store cables (lite room ) which would have been a nice touch . the Tipola bc which I have is pretty hard to fault very good to carry fully loaded and secure when travelling to open it you have to take it off which is a big plus

so far I have the lightroom roller and the Tilopa Bc which I used on a assignment to vietnam I carried every thing with me and it was great , back home I use the lighttroom roller but travel with the backback in case i need to walk or climb some where its just easier to carry the gear I have a few icu so I can change out Kits and they also make nice little case that you can pack clothes around and put into check in Luggage