Choosing camera gear for a long motorcycle ride as proved to be more challenging than I'd ever anticipated. There are a number of constraints that you don't have to deal with, when working from a car. The obvious considerations are volume and weight, what makes it harder is that I also needed to find a waterproof locking case that could survive serious rain, hail, road spray (all of the things that we bikers really love). The case also needed to provide vibration protection (foam insert) and hardest of all - it needed to fit on a fairly narrow space behind the saddle, where I have a maximum of 16 inches in width so I can still get the side bags open.
I was trying to find a case that I could simply put a photo backpack into, but a photo pack big enough for medium format gear (Contax 645, and lenses). The
Gura Gear Kiboko bag is fairly large at 21 x 14 x 8.5 It turns out that the only cases that were big enough also had wheels and a collapsing pull handle both of which add weight, bulk, cost, and make the case harder to mount on the bike. I finally decided perhaps I needed to rethink the gear. It turns out that my Ebony SW45 field camera and lenses is smaller and significantly lighter than my Contax 645 due entirely to the size and weight of the lenses. Contax lenses are large and heavy, a single lens weighs more, and takes up about the same space as my 3 large format lenses. The SW45 is bigger than the Contax but the weight is similar. I finally decided to take the Ebony, 4 lenses, the Phase One P45+ digital back, the Phase One sliding back, a Nikon D2Xs with an 18-200 VR lens. In hind sight I'm sort of wishing I'd just bought the Nikon D3X when it came out and skipped the Phase One back - granted the image quality of the 39 megapixel Phase One is noticeably better than the 24 megapixel D3X but in reality, unless your a photographer your not all that likely to notice, then again - 4x5 lenses are noticeably sharper than any zoom. Everything requires compromise in some way.
The final kit fits in a Stormcase iM2600 although it's pretty tight and I suspect by the time I'm done with this trip, I'll be ready to have a new top box made to the dimensions I need to efficiently fit all the gear I really want/need to take.
The next big challenge is mounting it to the bike. Fortunately
Jesse Luggage makes a GS plate that replaces the passenger seat, and I can mount the box to that plate. The plate can then be removed from the Bike using the ignition key to unlock the seats. This will let me take the case in when I stay at a motel, but leave it locked up when I take a lunch/coffee break on the road.
I won't know for sure how well this all works until I've been on the road for a few weeks. Hopefully it will perform well enough that I won't want to change it before I return home.
I'm guessing this one does not come as cheap as my Canon XSi 450D? 
