Tips on packing your LED light kit?

[MikeKozlenko]

With the classic lowel or arri kits, it was easy to get a case with several different compartments that you can easily put different lights into, and they would fit like a glove. Rifa Softboxes could easily fold into a pouch, and everything would fit nicely (besides the latches being really hard to close sometimes on the hard cases, super annoying).

But with square-like LED lights that take up more space, I'm wondering what you guys do to pack everything into a nice, transportable kit? I don't really have a good solution for this yet, so carrying stuff from my car to location is always a pain.

 

[Eric Coughlin]

I was just looking at bags when I came across this topic. I have a Manfrotto (Kata when I bought it) Pro-Light Rolling Lighting Gear Organizer (Large) which I use for my camera gear. After searching I think getting a second one is the solution for my LED lighting kit.

I just emptied my camera gear and took a photo of the bag with a couple Litepanel Astra LEDs.

They fit, though snugly. You can also stack them, probably up to three on top of each other, so you could fit up to six in the bag. I'd probably use pillow cases or similar to separate them so they don't scratch when stacked. I'm planning to buy two more panel lights, probably the new Litepanel Astra Soft, or the Area 48 LEDs. That along with three Practlite 602 LED Fresnels and a Zylight F8-200. Should all fit in that bag. That'd be about 47 lbs of lights, figure some umbrellas, maybe some stingers, and you'd be at 55 lbs plus the bag which is 13 lbs, so about 70 lbs. Heavy, but manageable. My current setup with my camera gear is about 60-65 lbs. I could always leave out the stingers and put them in the bag with my Anton Bauer batteries to save a bit of weight.

Manfrotto also sells the extra large version of that bag which is 1.4 lbs heavier and 5 inches longer. I'm currently trying to decide between the large and the extra large for my lighting kit. I'm leaning toward the extra large.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1058095-REG/manfrotto_mb_pl_lw_99_pro_extra_large_camera.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1058094-REG/manfrotto_mb_pl_lw_97w_pro_light_large_camera.html

Here are my replacement thoughts regarding the tungsten lights I currently have:

Arri 650 = Zylight F8-200
Dedolight DLH4 = Pracilite 602
2x Lowel Pro 250 = 2x Practlite 602
3x Lowel Tota = 3x Lightpanel Astra
Lowel Rifa 1k = Lightpanel Astra