TRAVEL WITH A CAMERA AND SOME WEIGHTY PROBLEMS
06th October 2011
After having seen The Killing on TV I had a hankering to visit Denmark. I'm not talking about the rather poor copy of The Killing made in America, but the original Danish version with sub-titles. As luck would have it, England's women are taking part in the European Indoor Trophy in Slagelse in January, so I'm off to Denmark in the New Year and I'm really looking forward to it.
Now, as you can imagine, lugging my photography kit around Europe can be a bit of a burden. When all of it's packed into a roller bag, including the MacBook, it is a hefty weight. Fortunately, Easyjet does not have a weight limit on hand baggage, although many airlines do. Norwegian, for instance, has a 10 kilogram limit. For indoors I can dispense with the long lens. The 70-200 VR is good indoors, if there is decent light, and I have a couple of faster primes I can use if I get desperate. Overall the weight is a bit less and I can get it all in a camera rucksack. But, as an experiment I recently packed all my indoor stuff into the rucksack and it came to, er.....11 kilograms.
Getting to Denmark is proving a real challenge. There are no daytime flights to Copenhagen with Easyjet on the day I wish to travel out and there is a long train ride from Copenhagen to Slagelse, which would mean that I would arrive there in the middle of the night. The ferry from Harwich is very attractive but it only operates every two days. I would have to spend an extra day in Denmark before returning, which is not really convenient. There are other airlines that fly to Copenhagen, including Norwegian. Of course, they never weigh your hand baggage do they? Well, yes they do. I was hanging around a check-in area once when I saw a traveler being asked to put his hand baggage on the conveyor and next thing I noticed was him repacking all his bags. I have been haunted by that image every since. My insurance does not cover me for my camera equipment carried in the hold, which is some sort of indictment on the honesty of baggage handlers around the world.
The solution has proved to be to travel out by ferry and return by Easyjet on an evening flight. I've never booked a one-way flight with an airline before and traveling in the reverse direction created some interesting scenarios, such as the default currency being in Kroner, and you have to wade through pages about hotels and car hire in London.
Getting back to The Killing, our friends on the Continent are producing some first-rate crime series these days which make the American imports look plain silly. I can highly recommend the French series Spiral, which is returning to our TVs soon, as is another series of The Killing. Although the plots are sometimes a bit daft, I love the original Swedish version of Wallander. Some people don't like sub titles, but even with my limited Swedish, Danish and French, you can still spot the odd translation gaff, like the sub title reference in Spiral to the Crown Court. I thought France was a republic?
Now, as you can imagine, lugging my photography kit around Europe can be a bit of a burden. When all of it's packed into a roller bag, including the MacBook, it is a hefty weight. Fortunately, Easyjet does not have a weight limit on hand baggage, although many airlines do. Norwegian, for instance, has a 10 kilogram limit. For indoors I can dispense with the long lens. The 70-200 VR is good indoors, if there is decent light, and I have a couple of faster primes I can use if I get desperate. Overall the weight is a bit less and I can get it all in a camera rucksack. But, as an experiment I recently packed all my indoor stuff into the rucksack and it came to, er.....11 kilograms.
Getting to Denmark is proving a real challenge. There are no daytime flights to Copenhagen with Easyjet on the day I wish to travel out and there is a long train ride from Copenhagen to Slagelse, which would mean that I would arrive there in the middle of the night. The ferry from Harwich is very attractive but it only operates every two days. I would have to spend an extra day in Denmark before returning, which is not really convenient. There are other airlines that fly to Copenhagen, including Norwegian. Of course, they never weigh your hand baggage do they? Well, yes they do. I was hanging around a check-in area once when I saw a traveler being asked to put his hand baggage on the conveyor and next thing I noticed was him repacking all his bags. I have been haunted by that image every since. My insurance does not cover me for my camera equipment carried in the hold, which is some sort of indictment on the honesty of baggage handlers around the world.
The solution has proved to be to travel out by ferry and return by Easyjet on an evening flight. I've never booked a one-way flight with an airline before and traveling in the reverse direction created some interesting scenarios, such as the default currency being in Kroner, and you have to wade through pages about hotels and car hire in London.
Getting back to The Killing, our friends on the Continent are producing some first-rate crime series these days which make the American imports look plain silly. I can highly recommend the French series Spiral, which is returning to our TVs soon, as is another series of The Killing. Although the plots are sometimes a bit daft, I love the original Swedish version of Wallander. Some people don't like sub titles, but even with my limited Swedish, Danish and French, you can still spot the odd translation gaff, like the sub title reference in Spiral to the Crown Court. I thought France was a republic?
