DREW WILEY
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Ha! Heavy cases or dedicated camera packs with a lot of redundant heavy foam padding might be fine for studio use or car transport shoots, but often weigh as much or more than the camera itself. A well built classic external frame pack which wonly 4 or 5 lbs is capable of hauling over a 100 lbs of gear (not so the newer made in China substitutes). And ordinary bubble packing and fomecore board dividers weigh next to nothing. In the mountains, I'd wrap the monorail with my goosedown jacket. I'm not trying to discourage the purchase of dedicated camera packs; they have their legitimate uses.
So if you want to carry a monorail comfortably, or over a long distance, real backpacking packs are the way to go, and external frames designs can manage a fully set-up monorail quite conveniently. I just pull mine right out of the top compartment, plop it on the tripod and tighten, and extend the bellows, maybe even leaving a particular lens and compendium shade on the whole time. Plus you can conveniently handle an extremely wide range of lens focal lengths. Want to save weight? A basic Sinar rail clamp weighs a lot less than a regular tripod head, and long focal length lenses of conventional design weigh just a fraction of telephoto equivalents, and tend to be optically superior too, with significantly bigger image circles.
Most monorails are also far easier to balance atop a tripod than overhanging flatbed designs, so potentially save tripod weight in that respect too. In other words, you need to think of the cumulative weight of the entire working system, not just the camera body weight per se. It makes a big difference. But if you need to squeeze the entire nine yards into an airline carryon, well then, flatbed field cameras tend to make more sense.
So if you want to carry a monorail comfortably, or over a long distance, real backpacking packs are the way to go, and external frames designs can manage a fully set-up monorail quite conveniently. I just pull mine right out of the top compartment, plop it on the tripod and tighten, and extend the bellows, maybe even leaving a particular lens and compendium shade on the whole time. Plus you can conveniently handle an extremely wide range of lens focal lengths. Want to save weight? A basic Sinar rail clamp weighs a lot less than a regular tripod head, and long focal length lenses of conventional design weigh just a fraction of telephoto equivalents, and tend to be optically superior too, with significantly bigger image circles.
Most monorails are also far easier to balance atop a tripod than overhanging flatbed designs, so potentially save tripod weight in that respect too. In other words, you need to think of the cumulative weight of the entire working system, not just the camera body weight per se. It makes a big difference. But if you need to squeeze the entire nine yards into an airline carryon, well then, flatbed field cameras tend to make more sense.