Photo Tip ~ Roll Your Our Own Protection

Photo Tip Tuesday - Roll your our camera protection and much more.

This is from the practical photography tip pile. Not so much about the process of taking photos, but rather protecting your equipment in order to keep making photos. By no means am I implying this is the ultimate protection for your camera, no it’s not. But in a pinch, it can save the day. If I know it’s going to rain or snow I bring along my serious camera rain cover in order to keep shooting despite the weather.

I start this process with a clean average shopping bag and make sure there are no holes in the bottom or sides.

1. Double over and fold in the side panels smoothing the bag flat.
2. Repeat this fold over and smoothing until you have a strip about 2 – 3″ wide
3. Slowly roll the bag from the bottom up. This removes any trapped air as you go.
4. Once it’s rolled up, hold it in place with two rubber bands.

This little contraption takes a couple minutes to make, consumes almost no space in a camera bag, and will save your behind eventually. I have these all over in camera bags, Pelican cases, and in my car. I’ve used them; to cover my camera in unexpected rain, cover myself as well, pick up garbage, collect seashells, and last summer we loaded several to the gills with little pieces of driftwood on the Northern California coast.

Added bonus tip ~ if you have something small that needs to stay safe, roll it inside the bag. If you’re camping, a few dry matches might be nice if it rains. Make a mini emergency photo kit with a small length of rolled up gaffer tape, extra cleaning cloth, small screwdriver, paperclips, maybe even a backup emergency memory card. You know one of the 128mb ones that never gets used anymore. It would be pretty handy rolled in the bag at the bottom of your case, if you somehow lost all your other cards, right?

We were at an event recently where they gave out free posters, flat and big. Ah ha! I know, I have an extra (that’s why I put two on) rubber band right here. Got a creative or practical photography tip, leave a comment below. Thanks and happy, dry, shooting!