Gear management on the Road

Lately I have found myself doing a lot more videography than Photography, though I carry both types and one never goes without the other entirely.

This thread is for those who rent/own equipment, and often -you define HOW often- one is beckoned off site, to another City/State. Please read on and share your tricks, tips, thoughts, jokes, etc.

Me and my team now have a variety of bags, suitcases, and its always the constant struggle of "Ok, you carry on these two bags, I'll carry on those, let's check in the tripods and the non-electronics, etc".
Ever since I started doing this, it's been a nightmare.

Flying: The Check-in vs Carry-On struggle
The fears of checking-in gear that could end up in another airport within 24hs of your needing the equipment could cause catastrophic consequences. Same with mishandling or theft.
I refuse however, to either get on a Coach seat in a 767 with two Video Cameras, a DSLR, and two Laptops, crammed into two bags. To me, this spells wear and tear, and not necessarily less risk for falls, damage, etc.
At this point I am considering pushing for standarization:
- Big Pelican Cases, with dual Padlocks and proper foam inserts to ensure ruggedness.
- GPS Tracking for all Pelican Cases, in order to establish an accurate way to follow the equipment
- Carry On, only the minimum or the invaluable (never have a single copy of the footage, always a backup in two places), etc.

How do you deal with this in your case? Have you had issues checking in gear if properly secured and packed?

On Site: Gear Tracking
At any one venue I might have 3-5 Cameras with their respective cables, projector, PA system, audio system (Lav Mics and Handheld Mics), wireless HDMI Tx/Rx, Lighting, Zoom (h4n) devices, etc etc.
All of those require batteries, cables, AC adapters, and you imagine the rest.
One of my coworkers came up with this idea: https://www.kickstarte​r.com …te-gear-management-system
It sure has potential, however the gear is only as organized as the people who are using it. In very fluid shoots, many times you end up wrapping a session at 11pm, and throwing all the cables in whatever bag, removing yards and yards of no longer useful gaffer tape, and etc.
My thoughts:
- Using the Pelican Cases, we could simply define two Camera Cases, an Audio Case, a Cables Case, etc.
- We would still have to keep track of over a dozen SD/CF cards, ensure we back up all the raw data to an external device (WD has a nice device where we can dump all the data, in order to have redundancy) Last trip our green horn lost our SD cards with all the photos/footage, only to be recovered as we were leaving for the airport.

How do you manage your gear and miscellaneous on the road?

I'll leave it at that for now, through the years having one or two bags, a couple of cameras, keeping track of items was rather simple. But with more people, better productions, its turning into a situation where losing a high end camera would really bite the big one, and yet carrying them on the flight like alien-mutant/attention-hungry babies is a bit overkill.

Thank you for reading thus far, and for sharing your views on these matters.
Happy Holidays!

I can only offer a little insight as its just my wife and I that shoot weddings and do not have nearly that amount of gear. Traveling I have a converted carry on bag that I use to carry enough kit to get what ever job done at the other end that I have been hired to do.

Memory cards, I have a case that is always on my persons at any event. A used card gets pulled from any camera it goes right into the case and a new one comes out. That case NEVER leaves me. When packing after a wedding we have our case and everything has a spot, if a spot is empty we are missing something. We take the extra couple minutes to make sure we are not leaving anything behind (I have lost lens caps and hoods but that's about it).

Not sure any of that helps.

I did read something someplace that if you place a hand gun in each case, declare it to the people at the airport your bags go a different way then standard bags thru the airport, this was with regards to bags having high dollar value items as well.

Unfortunately the handgun thing stinks because TSA will open and inspect each and every bag containing them which could possibly lead to missed flights.

In my experience it CAN be a major PITA to fly with firearms. It totally depends upon the airports you frequent... case in point Montana (Billings) was a breeze and Oregon (PDX) not so much.

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #18209703
Unfortunately the handgun thing stinks because TSA will open and inspect each and every bag containing them which could possibly lead to missed flights.

In my experience it CAN be a major PITA to fly with firearms. It totally depends upon the airports you frequent... case in point Montana (Billings) was a breeze and Oregon (PDX) not so much.

I figured as much, I think what I read was that if something went missing out of a case with a gun in it, it was a much bigger deal for the airport. Not something I plan to ever do, just tossing it out there.

I just purchased a Lightware strobe case for a new video camcorder. The cam is pretty tall and wide with it's removable handles, and I don't want to break it down to fit the case.

Rowing against the flow, I do like a vertical case mostly because it's very easy to plant at my feet or under the tripod and work out of. That's important for security and quick access. Everything is right where I'm working. Everything stays very close. The lid can flop down without zipping it up, protecting from mist, dust, or curious eyes. It's not as underfoot as a pelican-style case; a briefcase-style is hard to work out of, I'd always be stepping in it/on it, because it's much lower and covers more of the ground.

The Lightware is light - 8 lbs. for a case with lots of space. Of course this space works best for vertical items like tall cams or medium and long lenses. It's fantastically durable short of running a vehicle over it. What's inside is well-padded, but, my smaller items will be in cases of their own. It fits some larger pieces, like the case for my 7" monitor, or, a 150-600mm *in* its Lowepro case. It doesn't tear up the hands or the inside of a car, because it's all padded nylon on the outside - a soft case with a hard shell.

People check them with strobes and powerpacks. But I'm around town, in and out of cars and trucks. There are a few other sizes...