Good habits for protecting your equipment from damage

Follow-up to the Blunders and Stupidity thread...

OK, so a lot of people have dropped cameras, lenses or other stuff on conrete floors, in sand or in water. What can we learn from all the horror stories? I try to teach myself good habits, like always make sure I have the camera hanging around my neck when I change lenses (I dropped my 10D once while it was lying on my lap when I was changing lenses ).

Do you have any ideas for "good habits" to protect your gear against damage, theft and other disasters?

Yes !

The water-thing was me : it turned out that dropping in water was far better than dropping on concrete Off course, this was in times I still used fully manual 'machinery'. I wouldn't want to try this again with my current equipment...

My advice : train your spouse to become a photographic slave. She can hand you the equipment, so you don't have 3 or 4 tools to take care of with only 2 hands. And if something gets dropped, she's always to blame

Seriously : I often am in a situation that changing lenses has to go very quick - thinking of it, I rather miss the shot than to have some glass on the floor.

Another one : don't bother putting the lens covers in place when changing lenses in a hectic moment with the chance of dropping them. Better put the unprotected lens in your bag straight away. Compartments should keep it from banging into other equipment. Of course there's always the dust issue

That raises another question : does any of you never use the lenscovers when in the bag? I refer to the catalogue images of Lowepro, Tamrac,...

Good advice Aero. And yes, I use lens caps when in the bag for stooring lenses, but when out on assignment and I'm using several lenses on only one camera a good practice would be to lose the lens caps for that shoot. When the shoot is over, blow off the dust and reinstall lens caps.

The least amount of crap you have to deal with when changing lenses the better.

Always, always use the neck strap!!

Yes, the neck strap is a must.

I almost always change lenses either in the car or indoors. If not, I get down low (less distance to the ground), hover over the bag or something soft and prepare the next lens by removing the rear cap. then I remove the first lens, set it either in a slot in the bag or where the camera sits, and set the loose cap on the back of it. Then I pull out the second lens and put it on the camera, all the time hovering over the bag.

Once the second lens is secured, I secure the cap on the first lens and I'm ready to shoot. I know its not the fastest, but I've paid too much for this stuff to be bouncing it around like a basketball.

Indoors, its much easier - there's always a table or something to use and the swap can be done while seated most of the time.

Make sure you've got the stuff insured. It won't stop the disasters but it'll make them a hell of a lot easier to deal with...