Lowepro Hardside Cases

There are two camps in the traveling video production world – those who pack all their gear in hard Pelican cases with custom foam inserts or neatly arranged dividers, and those who wrap their gear in neoprene wraps or stuff them in little cases and then pack everything into larger bags or suitcases.

We use a lot of 19-inch Domke Wraps for our packing

We belong to the latter, for many reasons which we’ve recently explained in our Rolling Camera Bags post. Using heavy Pelican cases with foam or dividers tends to mean you bring a lot of cases per shoot, which racks up your baggage costs, requires bigger vehicles for travel, limits your ability to run and gun, and may even require you to hire an assistant to help you manage all the bags.

Pelican’s recent Air line does make it a little more attractive to pack the super expensive stuff – like lenses – into hard cases. Their new Pelican 1507 Air doesn’t seem that big or heavy.

But for the most part, we like to prioritize portability, flexibility, and being able to use whatever bags in any configuration we choose, depending on the shooting needs.

Lowepro Hardside Cases

Lowepro’s new Hardside series are an excellent solution for those of you who are in our camp. You like to wrap things in neoprene wraps or little bags, and then pack everything tightly into larger bags or suitcases.

But some items comes with accessories, or various little pieces, and you don’t want to have to keep track of a lot of small parts in separate neoprene wraps or baggies. Like drones, or portable gimbals. We carry both our Mavic Pro and our gimbal in little hard side cases we’ve repurposed from other gear.

Now Lowepro has specifically made these affordable little cases that can accommodate a variety of gear, from small cameras, drones, hard drives, camera accessories, external monitors, you name it. Plus, they have impact protection, so your gear will be safe even if you’ve stuffed these cases next to sharp objects. Or if you want to carry one of them by itself.

There are four different sizes and they have slightly varying features, from removable dividers to carrying handles. Here are links to the 4 cases:

• Lowepro Hardside CS 20 – 3.6 x 5.7 inches
• Lowepro Hardside CS 40 – 4 x 6.3 inches
• Lowepro Hardside CS 60 – 5.5 x 8.9 inches
• Lowepro Hardisde CS 80 – 8.6 x 9.6 inches

More information at the Lowepro product page.