Create Your Own Modular Camera Bag System

A primary goal with camera gear transport is to prevent metal objects from colliding with one another. There are a variety of ways to do this.

Many professional camera bags, such as those made by Lowepro, feature padded dividers to eliminate unwanted contact. This works great as long as your gear goes directly from the bag, to use, and back to the bag.

That's not always the way I work, however.

Often my camera bag is packed for traveling from one place to another, holding all of the equipment that I would need for that duration of the trip. Once I arrive at my destination, I most likely want to move about with fewer items, only selecting what I need for a particular shoot.

I'll have a flat shoulder bag packed in my suitcase, such as the Lowepro Photo Sport 18L Shoulder Bag or the Walking Man Shoulder Bag, then use pouches to protect individual items.

The Lowepro Photo Sport Shoulder Bag is a favorite of mine for travel.

The system can be quite efficient because I stow much of my gear in pouches in the large camera bag. Then I simply pull the items that I want and relocate them to the new bag. Essentially, it's a modular system for your camera gear on location.

Pouch features that I look for when designing this system include:

Squarish shape that is more efficient when packed in a bag.
Belt loop, and if possible, optional shoulder strap. This allows me to head out to dinner with just the pouch and no other bag at all.
A variety of colors. This helps to quickly identify one pouch from another.

The downside to this approach is that you can't get as much equipment in your "Point A to Point B" bag because of the pouches themselves. So I don't use this setup for every shoot. But for vacation travel and non-photography business, it works like a charm.