C200: Travelling with camera equipment

[puredrifting]

Support is very important, so I don't get why someone would use one tripod/head at home, but a lesser one when they travel, just because it's lighter and may save them on shipping/baggage charges. So the shoot your traveling for is not as important as shoots you do at home...? If the set-up isn't a compromise, then why aren't you shooting with it all the time at home, too?

For me, it's mainly been about the weight limits with various European Airlines, especially Air France. I've been on several flights where they simply wouldn't let us bring all of the gear we needed, even with us offering to pay huge extra weight baggage charges. We had to call our office and have a PA come to the airport to pick up some gear that they simply wouldn't let us bring on the plane because of weight. The domestic airlines seem much less concerned about this but some of the Euro carriers are really, really strict and not on;y weigh your checked bags but also weigh your carry on bags. They wouldn't let us carry on everything or check it and they were militant about it. The challenge with shipping is I simply don't trust carriers in many countries. In several I've shot in in Africa and even South America, there simply is no DHL/FedEx/UPS facility nearby and they dpon't offer all of the nice pickup and dropoff services like they do here in the U.S.

I have a travel tripod because it weighs almost 1/3 of my "home" tripod and at times, it's either that or no tripod. Not usually a problem in the US but oversaes, can be a deal breaker, as I've experienced.