In your bag 1780 – Rich Jackson

Better late than never. Rich submitted this bag a while back and I have finally got around to sharing it with you. Rich has some pretty amazing cameras to use for his trip, I hope he got lots of great shots.

The New York Bag

5 weeks until I fly out for New York (Edit: He’s been and back now), so it’s an ideal time to sort out what is going in the camera bag, although to be honest, that’s been on my mind since I booked tickets two months ago. I even considered not bringing film! Luckily I woke up from that nightmare quick enough.
New York isn’t the end goal of the trip, that’s hiking on the Appalachian trail, not all of it, but enough that I need to think carefully about what I bring, although I’m not flying all the way from New Zealand without shooting some film!

Three Cameras

So three cameras make the list:
Hasselblad Xpan with the 45mm, that’s the camera that even the wife knows by name, knows where it’s kept and knows if the house catches on fire, it comes first! I’ve had this a while and got in before prices went higher than a Cheech and Chong dressing room.
Unfortunately I realised that the Xpan has formed the basis of what I shoot for so long that I got scared and bought a second one as “insurance”, so I’m not left selling a kidney to get a replacement should/if/when the electronics pack up and it becomes a very nice looking paper weight.

Hasselblad SWC. I shoot this from the hip without a viewfinder, close, discreet and so, so good in a big city. Yes I could shoot just this and crop to Xpan format later, but then I could shoot the XPan in 35mm mode and not bring the Leica… Insert “feeling sick emoji” here, no no, I’m just not going to do any of that, so the SWC is in the bag.

M3, repainted by Shueido with Voigtlander 40mm Heliar. Blasphemy 40mm on a M3 you say! It shoots a bit wider than a 50, just a little “insurance” around the frame. But it’s close enough to the full viewfinder extent that I’m happy framing it, and in black paint, it looks good, very very good on the black paint M3. One of those, “makes you just want to pick it up and shoot” combos.

Film!

Film, I’ll be keeping pretty simple, HP5, some more HP5 and a little more HP5. It just works for me, I can push it if it gets dark and it’s “slow” enough to shoot in the midday sun. There is a roll of Delta 3200 in the bag as well, I might shoot it, I might just stick to pushed HP5, we will see.
This roll serves as my TSA distraction roll and has saved me more than once from the X-ray machine. “no my film is not fine, please hand check it, its high ISO and will get ruined!”. That usually works but I did once get a lovely TSA staff member, let’s call her Karen, giving me an informative lecture that “if you’re worried about X-rays, you better not put your bag in the overhead locker, the plane’s electronics will ruin your film too!” Who would have guessed that an electrical engineer with so much knowledge was moonlighting as a TSA worker…

Rounding out the bag, I pack light. Phone, headphones, airtag, lens cloth, spare batteries, (note to self, buy some spare batteries). Lastly, a water bottle, I absolutely HATE spending my last dollar on overpriced rain in a bottle, my last dollar is needed to fund my film addiction!

And it all fits in the Artisan & Artist, ACAM-7100 bag, straps are by Artisan & Artist too, they make very nice stuff. The bag is perfect for what I need, I’ve ended up with 4! The only issue is that it fits 2 cameras, I only need to bring 2 I’ve told myself… So now I just need to spend the next 5 weeks figuring out which of the cameras is vacationing at home…

Rich from NZ

Thanks for sharing your travel bag with us, Rich. I hope you had a great trip. My apologies for taking so long to get it up on the site.

Please keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com

Send me a high resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500px across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story. Snapshots of your gear with a camera phone and no words will not be featured.
Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here. Please understand that there is a long wait now as there is a backlog of submissions. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, as the ones that are not do not go up.

Cheers
Japancamerahunter