traveling with pro- heads

[paul_jones]

i am traveling around with my pro-7 heads to several countries soon. i have my heads in a tenba case. but when ive had head couriered to me one had a broken tube and one got a cracked glass cover.

im not sure if airlines are any easier on gear than fedex, so should i be removing my flash tubes every time i travel?

what do other people do? i also thought i could possibly stuff sponge rubber around the tube inside the glass cover, and around teh glass cover inside the protection cap.

cheers paul

[arashm]

Paul
your best bet is to remove the glass and the model lights and tube. wrap them and place in a small pelican.
back in the day ( I assisted for 10 years ) tried all sort of things, including padding as you suggested, never worked.
either leave them on and hope for the best, or remove the whole front end ( what I ended up doing)
my other suggestion is to use towels or old t-shirts to make sure the heads are not loose in the case and make sure they don't even wiggle.
kinda like eggs in the carton.
it also suxs when the TSA trashes your stuff when you check it and they leave you that little nice note that the TSA checked your bag....
good luck.
am

[paul_jones]

Paul
your best bet is to remove the glass and the model lights and tube. wrap them and place in a small pelican.
back in the day ( I assisted for 10 years ) tried all sort of things, including padding as you suggested, never worked.
either leave them on and hope for the best, or remove the whole front end ( what I ended up doing)
my other suggestion is to use towels or old t-shirts to make sure the heads are not loose in the case and make sure they don't even wiggle.
kinda like eggs in the carton.
it also suxs when the TSA trashes your stuff when you check it and they leave you that little nice note that the TSA checked your bag....
good luck.
am

thanks for that. that little wire thing that goes around the tube where the tab is - the one you undo to take the tube out... does that get ruined if you do it too often?

cheers paul

[UlfKrentz]

thanks for that. that little wire thing that goes around the tube where the tab is - the one you undo to take the tube out... does that get ruined if you do it too often?

cheers paul

Hi Paul,

Yes, it will. Thought about only renting the heads?

Cheers, Ulf

[ChristopherBarrett]

My reflectors get more f*cked up every time I fly.  I just ordered new cases from Versa-Flex and hope that helps.  It's disparaging to see $1500 worth of fairly new reflectors getting trashed so quickly.  I hate flying.  Really.

CB

[paul_jones]

Hi Paul,

Yes, it will. Thought about only renting the heads?

Cheers, Ulf

yeah i have, but some of the locations are tricky to get rental. i prefer using my own gear if i can.

cheers paul

[calindustries]

I worked as an assistant for 12 years, flying all over the world with gear.  In all of that time and all of my time flying with my own gear, the only head to break was a ringflash tube that wasn't packed properly by someone helping me out.  I don't dismantle anything tube-wise, but do agree that things should be packed VERY tightly to avoid shift and rattle. I am annoyingly anal with how I pack gear (some guys I've worked with get pissed when I unpack a case they just threw together and repack it to my liking, so be it). 

One trick with the profoto heads is to put the reflector on the head before you cap it and then wrap the head cord around the cap, between the cap and reflector.  You can also do this by wrapping the head with the cord and then putting the reflector backwards over the cap (as long as the cord fills the reflector in some way).

Also I've always ONLY used Lightware, TenbaAir, and Tamrac Rolling Studio cases.  When I check your cases, I try go to the TSA counter with them.  If I'm polite they have always let me repack the case after they rummage through it.  That way it is packed the way I want.  I then lock it with a TSA lock after they have done their thing.  I've done this with domestic and international.

Best of luck!

[arashm]

I've never had any problems with the little wire thing.
but I do open and close them with care ( not that others don't)
Yes I agree with CB, I've also come to hate flying with gear, personally if I can rent and there is time to go get rentals and do returns, that's what I do.
come to think of it, every bit of damage I've ever had done to strobe gear has typically been in transit.
sigh....
am

[Lightbox]

Amazing to think that no matter how well you pack your gear, it still gets crushed by airline handling, from a recent trip to France and back from NZ -



I also read this blog before I left -

http://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2009/08/29/flying-with-an-elinchrom-ranger/

and funnily enough  I had the exact same experience as him at Auckland airport, sitting waiting to board the plane I heard my name announced over the speaker. Had to be taken all the way across the airport to the security and xray room where a guy was waiting for me to open my bag. I explained what was in the bag and gave him the spec sheets for the battery and porty, he didn't seem to interested in reading it though. He pointed to a piece of paper on the wall that had 4 names on it,

Elinchrom
Profoto
Hensel
Panasonic

Basically if my equipment wasn't one of the listed brands, it wasn't going on the flight. I had a huge sigh of relief after that and probably owe a big thanks to Dan and a few others that have been in/out of Auckland with professional flash equipment, I never had any trouble once in Europe though.

[paul_jones]

Amazing to think that no matter how well you pack your gear, it still gets crushed by airline handling, from a recent trip to France and back from NZ -



I also read this blog before I left -

http://dancarrphotography.com/blog/2009/08/29/flying-with-an-elinchrom-ranger/

and funnily enough  I had the exact same experience as him at Auckland airport, sitting waiting to board the plane I heard my name announced over the speaker. Had to be taken all the way across the airport to the security and xray room where a guy was waiting for me to open my bag. I explained what was in the bag and gave him the spec sheets for the battery and porty, he didn't seem to interested in reading it though. He pointed to a piece of paper on the wall that had 4 names on it,

Elinchrom
Profoto
Hensel
Panasonic

Basically if my equipment wasn't one of the listed brands, it wasn't going on the flight. I had a huge sigh of relief after that and probably owe a big thanks to Dan and a few others that have been in/out of Auckland with professional flash equipment, I never had any trouble once in Europe though.

i had a call a while from an assistant worried- saying that one of his US photographers shooting in New Zealand, who had brought his 7B packs with him on a job, wasn't allowed to take his battery packs back to the US with him.
I can't remember what happened, maybe he left just the battery.or pulled the cheaper lead battery out of the cassette .

but at the time, we couldn't find anything about it, the airlines were new to the who battery paranoia thing. But since then this is the doc that profoto has about their batteries-

http://www.profoto.com/sites/default/files/downloads/pdf/battery_travel_declaration.pdf

paul

[arashm]

I wonder how many photographers out there have images of smooshed reflectors
am