As readers of this blog (yes, all 3 of you, you know who you are) might have noticed, there has been a sudden in subject matter from snow (about time, too) to Paris. The city, not rich heiress. That can only mean one of two things, I´ve recently been to Paris or I stole someone´s memory card and am posting their images as my own. I´ll let you dicide which… wait, what? Ok, maybe I won´t let you choose, just in case.

Packing

The main advantage of a weekend sightseeing trip is that you can pack light… clothes I mean. You can reduce your clothes baggage to clean socks and underwear. Of course this works best either in summer or winter, when temperatures are usually stable and you can actually dress for a certain, fairly narrow temperature range. For cold (rain and wind 30+km/h was the forecast), layers work best… just like in onions, cakes, ogres and Photoshop.

Another advantage is not having any baggage to check in which saves you at least two, quite boring, queues at the airport as well as the requisite 2-hours-prior-to-departure needed for check in.

On the downside is that some low cost airlines have some silly flight limitations… yes Ryanair, I´m looking at you, you´d be better off not spending resources making lingerie calendars and easing up on in-flight selling. And that´s not a complaint about the calendar, mind you . Or easing on the 30€ a pop for checked item (more on that later).

And those about to start arguing that the low cost airlines have to do this in order to offer their low prices… that´s just BS. Simple as that. I´ve flown “regular” airlines cheap and they treat you in a normal way, not as if you´d have to thank them for letting you fly.

Taking the 055PROB head apart to reduce overall tripod length to 55cm

Taking the 055PROB head apart to reduce overall tripod length to 55cm

So, once the clothing was decided and the tripod length reduced to the 55cm limit, came the next part of packing, the camera bag.

And let me tell you, even with a LowePro Mini Trekker Classic, which is on the small-ish side as far as photo gear bags go, it can be a challenging task to decide how to best re-configure the compartments to fit your gear.

Packing the photo gear

Packing the photo gear, explained

Final configuration of photo gear

Final configuration of photo gear, explained

Of course, having learned from experience in Rome, I packed the EF-S 18-55mm just in case anything happened to the 18-200mm (“anything” for example being the lens dropping from shoulder height to cobblestone). Leaves you wondering why  for the love of everything good and holy you left the “kit lens” to save a bit of weight. As a side note, the original 18-200mm only got replaced a couple of months ago, two years after the fall.

Final packed bag configuration

Optional configuration, better for walking, just not around people or narrow places

So, about 45 minutes and 9.5kg later the packing was done. For a longer trip and less uptight weight limits, the laptop would also have been packed, but in this case, it was mostly dead weight. So, 9.5kg being a mere 0.5kg from the weight limit, I decided to move some weight into the other bag. The two 10-packs of extra batteries saved another 0.2kg, so that should be enough to be safe. Weight scale came courtesy of the Wii Fit board, which can be useful if you happen to shatter into a gazillion pieces your regular glass weight scale right when you need to use it for something important.

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