Packing, packing and more packing

A couple of weeks ago before I went on holiday I offered £100 on Twitter to anyone who would come round and pack for me, well I reckon I'm ready to up that offer and provide a blank cheque to anyone stupid enough... I mean kind enough to pack my stuff for a month in South Africa. I know it seems churlish to complain but I really hate packing!!

I'm lucky enough to have traveled a fair bit for my job and packing camera gear is a bit of a minefield. To illustrate the problem here's a quick pic of some of the equipment I'm taking to Cape Town with me:



As a rule when we fly, sports photographers will try to take at least the minimum they need to do the job with them as hand luggage. Normally this means the long lens, 70-200mm, at least one body, laptop and connectivity. As Virgin only allows 6kg of hand luggage and the 400mm 2.8 weighs in at 5kg on it's own it looks like I'll have to chuck that rule in the bin and hope the baggage handlers do their job with the skill and gentle touch that they are renowned for. Hmmm.

If anyone is interested in what I'll be taking with me here is a very dull list:

3 x Nikon D3's
Nikon 400mm 2.8
Nikon 70-200mm 2.8
Nikon 24-70mm 2.8
Nikon 17-35mm 2.8
Apple MacBookPro 13"
4 x Pocket Wizard Multimax
Nikon SB900
Nikon SB800
Think Tank Airport International
Peli Case 1610
Monopod, mini tripod (for remote)
2 x Card Readers
10 4gb CF Cards
Walk Stool
A whole mess of leads, chargers and adapters
2 x Giant Vuvuzela's

As with all posts in this blog feel free to ask any questions you might have about any aspect of the job, the World Cup or anything else you can think of and I'll do my best to get the correct answer from Wikipedia!