akfishguide Loc: PA

I am preparing for a trip to Indonesia and the airline has a 7 Kg (15 lbs) carry-on weight restriction. My camera and lenses, and my Macbook Pro in a Think Tank camera bag weigh about 18 Kg (36 lbs). I will be doing both topside and underwater photography, so one of my checked bags has 50 lbs of U/W camera housings and gear, and my other checked bag will have 50 lbs of dive gear as well as two swim suits and 4 tee shirts. I am trying to figure out what I can leave behind. Been thinking about leaving Mac out of carry-on and just taking several 32 Gb cards for the camera, but this is an 18 day, once in a lifetime trip and without the Mac I won't be able to edit photos. Any suggestions. Don't like to check cameras or laptop through.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

You want to edit while still on the trip? Forget the Mac.
Maybe you could leave behind some basic dive gear and rent when you get there? Also, you could possibly ship some gear there ahead of time and ship it back just before you leave. I used to do that while travelling the South Pacific at times.

Cattreasure

Not a bad idea to ship ahead. Keep in mind it does take a few more days for packages to arrive in Indonesia.

zuzanne Loc: Crawfordville, FL

Call the dive operator you will be using to see if they have and rent the dive gear you will need. Most do.
One thing you do not want to do is put expensive photo gear, computers and other electronics in a ship thru bag. Your usually allowed a carryon bag and a personal item. Make the Mac your personal item and hang your camera around your neck while boarding. Once on board just put the items in your carryon bag.

zuzanne

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

We ran into the same weight and size restrictions when flying to and from Bora Bora from Tahiti on Air Tahiti. They used ATR 60 turboprop aircraft, which aren't very big. Your flight is probably similar. At that time, I had a Canon camera bag with just my camera, 2 lenses, a flash, and a few other necessities. Almost exactly 7kg. The ticket agent took one look at the size of the bag and didn't even bother to weigh it on either flight. Mainly, they were looking for backpacks and larger carry-on bags such as are normally allowed on larger planes. Those planes are tight inside and they won't allow anything that won't fit into the overhead or under the seat, for safety reasons. I suggest you keep your carry-on bag as small as possible and restrict your camera gear to a body, a couple of lenses, a flash, spare battery & charger some extra cards and a card reader. Forget about the editing till you get home. In today's world it shouldn't be a problem to get access periodically to a computer to back up your photos to one or two sets of extra cards. You might want to check with where you are staying about computer access and maybe bring a small external hard drive with you. If you are forced to check your carry-on make sure you have a bag that doesn't advertise it's contents. Hope you have a great trip.
Edit: I just noticed your comment about underwater photography. That will complicate things for you by necessitating extra gear. My only suggestion there is that you sort out the items you will miss the least should anything happen to them and figure on checking them. Pay attention to the dimensions also. You may need to, or want to, get a smaller carry-on bag. It's a pain, but you just have to grin and bear it. Also, make sure all your gear is insured before you leave.

lazyjt1 Loc: Potter Valley, CA

Wear a photograpers vest with big pockets. Load your pockets with gear. After they weigh your bag, put it all back. Worked for me.

crimesc324 Loc: West Palm Beach, Florida

leave the Mac and save the editing for when you get home and have more time

djenrette Loc: Philadelphia

Internet are more common than you think and you should be able to do editing wherever you are. The other choice is to do as much editing as possible in the camera. Have a great time!

MtnMan Loc: ID

More smaller cards will help prevent disaster. If your camera allows it put RAW images on one card and jpegs on another for insurance.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Wow! That's not very much carry-on. If I were you I'd buy a Pelican case with the divider interior and put your least expensive camera gear in that and then have it insured for theft. Put only your most valuable camera equipment in a bag for carry-on.

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

leave the mac...if you are needing something for surfing or light editing, perhaps you can borrow/bring an ipad mini. Snapseed editing software does a pretty decent job.

I like the idea of a photographers vest, and stuffing it full of gear...way to work the system to your advantage! Wear cargo pants too while you're at it ;-)

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

Unfortunately, because of aircraft size restrictions, you run into that more often then not with the smaller regional carriers of the world. You should stand in line and watch the faces of the passengers who didn't read the restrictions before leaving home. Most aren't too thrilled about having to check their carry-on AND pay an additional charge. I commend the OP for paying attention to the details. It makes life much easier for everyone.

prayingmantis

I have a long history of trying to figure out how to deal with these weight restrictions given that I was taking trips for both underwater and above water photography. I first encountered a weight restriction problem in 1998 on a trip to Fiji. Using their local airline to travel from one island to another I encountered a 20 kg. (44lb) weight restriction on checked baggage and was limited to one checked bag. Prior to that all the carriers I ever used had 70 lb weight restriction and allowed 2 checked bags. I always carried on board a camera bag with one Nikon camera body, lenses up to 300mm F4, macro, wide, about 40 rolls of film, and my regulator. Everything else was on checked baggage. I always dove with 2 cameras and 4 strobes, a housed Nikon and a Nikonos with a 15mm lens piggybacked on top of the housing, the latter was always set up for macro. Translation....lots of weight. Needless to say when I got on board the local carrier in Fiji I had already exceeded the limit. Previously I traveled with 2 check-on pieces usually totaling about 120 lbs. I was charged $100 for overage. So here is the meat of what I figured out over time. Firstly, check with the airline you are traveling with to see if there is a charge for overage. If they tell you a check on bag weighing 70 pounds is going to cost you
$150 then I suggest you strongly consider that option because when you think about this "once in a lifetime" trip you already have committed yourself to spending about $4000 and probably a good deal more for this trip so paying $150 more as a penalty fee is well worth it if it allows you to easily carry everything you need. There are airlines that do not allow any overage weight because of the limits of airliner weight which can not be exceeded without a risk of not being able to lift off the ground before the runway runs out. I encountered this problem in Quito, Ecuador on a flight from Quito to the Galapagos Islands. This problem exists because Quito is at 9400 feet elevation and the lift the wings can generate in the thin air at this elevation is problematic. If you find out that there is no accommodation for overage then I would suggest you leave behind your BC as this is a heavy and bulky item and virtually every liveaboard boat I have dived with (all over the world) have BC's for rent. The learning curve for a different brand of BC than you normally dive with is minimal and in Indonesia you are not doing technically demanding diving such as one encounters say off the northern tip of Vancouver Island where the currents are extremely strong. Indonesia diving is very leisurely and rarely deeper than 80-90 feet depth. Again, if it costs you $100 to rent the BC that is a small fraction of the total cost of the trip. I would never rent a regulator, in fact I always carried my regulator in my carry-on. The regulator is your lifeline and you know when it was last serviced. With a rented regulator you don't know its history. Fins are also quite heavy and can easily be rented upon arrival in Indonesia. I would imagine your laptop weighs no more and probably less than the BC. BC and fins combined can easily weigh 12 lbs or more. There are many other suggestions that were made before mine that are excellent such as carrying a camera around your neck and wearing a photographers vest loaded up with lenses. Those strategies have always worked for me. That strategy also provides you with the peace of mind that a good portion of your camera gear will not be lost or delayed a few days from the destination because one of your bags gets sent to the wrong destination. This has happened to me once on a trip to Belize via American Airlines where my dive equipment bag arrived to the liveaboard boat 2 days after we disembarked. American Airlines was at fault and they had to hire a speed boat to bring the gear to the liveaboard I was on which was already about 60 miles from where we disembarked. As far as making your gear inconspicuous and not tempting to thieves I have a suggestion that Norb Wu uses (if you don't know who he is you should, Google him). I have traveled with Norb and he travels with multiple cameras and back in the 1990' with a massive custom housing with his 16mm movie camera and Pangenieux lens which I am sure was worth more than $25,000 at that time. The manner he traveled back then was to put his camera gear, all of it, into a 100+ quart Coleman cooler which he packed with lots of foam and he thoroughly sealed the cooler with a ton of duct tape. The Coleman coolers are virtually indestructible, are very cheap and lightweight. When a baggage handler sees a packed up Coleman cooler like that they think this must belong to someone who has no money and cant afford a good suitcase.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Maybe check out, what of that equipment you could rent over there and then leave that equipment out for travel.

chowe Loc: Summer, Northern CA, Winters, South Florida

I have the same problem, my two camera bags weigh close to 50 lbs. I don't take a computer and carry at least one 8 gb flash card for every day of the trip. Most airlines, once they find out that my carry ons are cameras, there are no problems. And a few airlines like Pacific Air will allow you to bring heavier or even extra bags for a fee that is smaller if you buy it in advance. The only time I've had to check my camera bag was in Vanuatu when the big plane was being repaired and we had to take a 12 passenger Turbo Prop. They absolutely would not let me carry it on board. They told me they would treat it very carefully and they did putting it on the plane. When we got to our destination I watched them throw it about 12' from the plane to the cart. Fortunately nothing was damaged. Coming back I carried it on the plane and put it on my lap, no one said anything, and this has been the case in all the other small planes I've been on.

I'm usually traveling with my wife and we can get all our dive gear in a dive bag except our regs, wetsuits, and prescription facemasks which my wife takes as her carryon. One more checked bag for our clothes etc. When I travel alone I have to check all my dive gear, which I hate to do, but have no choice.