How do you carry your practicals?

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Deniz Coker

Active member
So I keep carrying an increasing amount of CFLs, incandescent, just a nice assortment of light bulbs but I really haven't found a good solution for safely transporting them. It's hard because of their odd sizes. I have tiny CFLs to large ones and halogen PAR lights to incandescent bulbs. I thought of a pelican case but I'd like to fit them into my large case and a pelican would be too bulky. I've been thinking maybe a packing tube or something or maybe carving something out of foam? Anyone have a solution?
 
I had a dewalt drill case lying around, blow-mold plastic brief case size - I chopped all the molded dividers from it with one of those multi-saw things (where you can saw things flat against a surface with those L-shaped blades) and spray mounted some foam. Made slits for all my tungsten bulbs, so on location I can quickly relamp.

Using a lot more flos now, but the co. that makes "flolights" (google it) sells a blowmold briefcase for biax flo tubes. It's like $70, but googling for an empty blowmold case of that size I found things about $60, so the ready-made one seems a good deal.

I'd say check the goodwill store for used black roller suitcases, gut 'em, get some plastic containers & foam and make a custom solution. I could see a stack of "trays" nested in a case, with all sorts of lamps tucked into pick apart foam. If you can't find the right sized trays, find a buddy with a table saw and make some from 1/8" luan plywood.

I just bought a black cordura pizza delivery bag for my chinas - $16, looks like a photo case, and will hold 5 pizzas... or all your flattened lanterns and a box full of bulbs & foam.

Take a cruise through The Container Store - they have blowmold cases with foam, plastic army footlockers with wheels, and all sorts of plastic boxes & stuff - my main rig case is a big rolling camera bag but I used container store cubes (just added foam) to stack lenses & stuff.

I'm really big on having cases vs. cardboard boxes on set, but there's a lot of affordable stuff if you shop around - if you've got some tools and a pop riveter you can do all sorts of things.
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I use a plastic tote, the heavy duty kind that have the lids attatched the ones that open in the middle. Anyways, I just used bubble wrap on the bottom, and packing peanuts. I have never hurt a single lamp with this method..
 
I keep the globes in their original packaging and dump it all in a 6 gallon milk crate. Works. I now have two.
 
Superb, thanks so much guys! Michael that pizza case idea is ingenious! I'll be getting one of those for sure, I definitely owe you a beer! I'll have to check out plastic totes or milk crates too. Thanks again guys!
 
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