Traveling With Camera Gear Overseas

I tried looking online for the best camera bags to use when traveling with camera gear, and from my research, it was pretty tough to find. There isn’t that much information out there, so this is my experience when I travelled to the Philippines for two weeks.

I needed something that would haul my camera gear, store clothes, easy to hike with, and not be a hassle to carry. I used 3 bags to facilitate this:

  1. The Logitech camera bag
  2. A Jaguar carry-on luggage
  3. DJI’s standard drone backpack

I’ll start with the easiest first, the DJI backpack. This carried everything I needed to run the quadcopter with the exception of the batteries. You cannot checkin lithium batteries, so they stayed with me.

Logitech Camera Bag

My Logitech camera bag carried ALL of my electronics:

  1. 2 hard drives
  2. Sony a7s w/ battery grip, 5 extra batteries, and charger
  3. GoPro Hero 4 silver, 4 extra batteries, and charger
  4. Rode Video mic pro and two 9v batteries
  5. 2 Zoom H1 recorders with belt strap and lapels
  6. 15 MacBook Pro and charger
  7. 26,000 mAh portable charger
  8. Jobby Gorilla DSLR tripod

All of this gear was the main reason I was going out. This backpack was small enough to be considered as my personal item. The small tripod was good enough to use instead of bringing my manfrotto tripod which I rarely use. I could also use my phone and GoPro on the tripod which would give me more reasons to use them.

Jaguar Carry-on

The jaguar carry-on housed all of the items I needed in order to survive, if you will.

  1. An extra pair of shoes
  2. A couple of pairs of shorts, shirts, and under garments
  3. Laundry soap (to rewash my clothes in a hotel room or wherever I can get clean water. This is super important so you can pack lite)
  4. Glidecam HD4000 (Pre-balanced then broken down)
  5. 3 DJI batteries
  6. Toiletry items
  7. Wipes
  8. Medication
  9. Headphones
  10. Wallet and other documentation

DJI Phantom Backpack

The reason for checking in the quadcopter was because if that gets lost while traveling, I can still survive and enjoy my time wherever I am. My equipment helps me remember where I’ve been, but the whole objective is to enjoy my time and not have to worry about having dragon breath or pit stains on my shirt.

This packing method lasted for an 11-day trip between the city of Manila and the beaches of Palawan.

I have included links to all the equipment I use and hope you found this article to be helpful.