Packing for Video

All my video gear is housed in this CineBags CB-25A Revolution Backpack!

As I mentioned in my first post, in May of 1982 three of us went to England to shoot a television documentary. Back then, we didn't have the small-sized camcorders that are available today. State-of-the-art broadcast TV cameras for field use at that time was a separate video camera that usually weighed in at 25 pounds, plus a separate portable video cassette recorder what weighed not much less than the camera. It wasn't uncommon to see a videographer with a camera on one shoulder and a VCR hanging off the other shoulder.

Ironically, today's video camera's whether they are for professional or consumer use are much smaller than what we worked with in 1982, and, they record much better video than 1980s video gear. In fact, I'm not even shooting on videotape on this trip, but a SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) card that is the size of a postage stamp. On the England trip we could only get twenty minutes of video on each videocassette. With the SDHC cards I am taking, and shooting in High Definition (1080p/30frames) I can record almost 90 minutes of video on a 16GB (gigabyte) card.

All of the equipment I am taking for this trip fits into a specialized backpack produced by CineBags in southern California. It's also carry-on size which makes it even more convenient when traveling by air. What is going with me in the way of weight and size is a far cry from the hundreds of pounds of equipment we took with us for two camera crews to England in 1982. Things sure have come a long way! It's going to be amazing what technology brings us next.