Hi hi, recently bought a camera and would like to seek your kind input…
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Do you all use dry box to keep the camera and lens ? If yes, which model or brand do you recommend ?
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Is insurance a good idea in case of damage, theft, loss, etc ? If yes, which plan or insurer to consider ?
Thank you 🙏🏼
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I have a Pelican 1510 that I keep my camera stuff in as well as many other pelicans of different sizes; however, I don’t keep any batteries inside the cases…especially any that are Lithium Ion. I also keep a big packet of desiccant in the cases to prevent mold and fungus from spreading inside if left for long periods of time, unattended. These two items work together perfectly to preserve my gear. I suspect I could leave this gear in the cases for 100 years and come back to find all of it (except batteries) in 100% pristine condition.
Thanks for the suggestion! Seems like a good combo where I can use the case at home and outside. I will look into that in a nearby store.
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No, though I’ve thought about buying one just so I have a dedicated space for this that isn’t inside my bags. Was looking at Ruggard, can’t say anything about them since I don’t own one yet.
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Probably. I don’t use mine commercially, just have a ridiculous amount. So I’m about to tag mine as a rider to my renters insurance for something like $10 a month for ~20-30k coverage.
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You really haven’t answered where you live; if you’re not comfortable sharing, basically if your home area gets to 70% RH and above daily, then yes, you want a humidity-controlled storage solution.
I don’t use a dry box.
I do get insurance. It’ll depend on your country, but in the US, if it’s not a business, you don’t want the insurance that comes up with “camera insurance” searches - those are either a ripoff or focused on business insurance also. You want to contact a local insurance agent and ask about “inland marine” coverage. These tend to be pretty cheap - I have $11k of photography gear insured against theft / damage / loss for $150 a year with a $100 deductible. And I’ve seen some people get quotes for a bit LESS than that.
So, if your camera was like $300 then don’t insure it. But if you’ve got thousands into it, unless you also bank those thousands for replacement, the insurance cost is quite low for this as a hobby if you do the inland marine coverage.
If you live in a humid and wet country like I do (South East Asia), dry boxes are crucial to help stave off fungus growth. I use an electric dry box—the brand is Samurai, but honestly most dry box brands around my country seem to be rebranded Chinese OEMs so as long as it works it shouldn’t matter. It’s good habit to keep your cameras and lenses dry and making sure they’re dry before storing them away.
I’m a professional photographer but I don’t have insurance for my photography equipments because of the small insurance market for freelancers in my country. The cost of the insurance would be disproportional to the costs of my equipments. But if I have those $10k+ lenses, then it might start to make sense for me to look into it. Some home insurances might cover theft/fire/flood damage to your belongings, but read the fine prints.
Do you all use dry box to keep the camera and lens ? If yes, which model or brand do you recommend ?
No. It obviously depends on where you’re travelling and what you’re doing with your camera, but I just use a regular camera bag and make sure it stays dry. The one time I had water damage was when the camera was in use and I was actively taking pictures, so the best case in the world wouldn’t have helped me there.
Is insurance a good idea in case of damage, theft, loss, etc ? If yes, which plan or insurer to consider ?
Insurance is a bad deal for the person getting the insurance (=you), at least on average. The insurance company has a lot of CEOs, workers, buildings, vehicles, lobbying and advertising to pay for and these things are paid by the difference between what you pay them and what they pay out in case of a claim.
So you don’t get insurance to save money. If that worked, insurance companies would all go bankrupt. You get insurance for things that would have a disastrous effect on your life if they happen to you. For example, you get health insurance so in case you get sick, you can afford treatment. Or you can insure your house if you would be homeless in case it burns down.
If photography is just a hobby and maybe you could even afford to buy a new camera in case the old one was stolen/lost/broken, then you really shouldn’t insure it. I would only consider an insurance if it was my job, I depended on the equipment and I didn’t have the funds to buy it new.
I think you need to define “bad deal” a little more. Insurance is money you’re basically throwing away if you never need to make a claim - and in a lot of cases you do hope you never need to make a claim. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a “bad deal”. If the items you’re risking are enough that you replacing them would be more likely to kill your hobby - insurance isn’t a bad deal, it enables you to have this hobby. Because if you leave your camera at home because you’re afraid of losing it or breaking it - well, you’re not actually getting much use out of it (in most cases).
The other thing is you can perhaps have more information about your situation and be pretty sure you’ll need to replace or repair something in a way that doesn’t necessarily widely apply or see insurance companies offering extremely low rates for some situations - perhaps something like loss leaders. An example might be some of the house insurance policies that have a rider for mechanical breakdowns, where the rider is a very low fee ($45 a year say). If you know it covers well pumps, and that you’ll need to replace your well pump in ~10 years, the cost isn’t going to exceed the cost of the well pump installation minus the deductible. I assume this sort of policy works because the company also sells a lot of these policies to people who don’t have wells.
The other nitpick I’ll have here is that unless you define “bad deal” as “not the cheapest option overall”, you’ll have way more reasons to discard this idea. For instance, in a lot of ways financing is a “bad deal” in that it costs more money, but might be a “great deal” because you can actually get a car you need to earn money to live with it, and you’d starve before you could save up thousands of dollars for a car.
“Bad deal” in this case is purely from a mathematics point of view.
For example, you have camera equipment worth $2000 and there’s a 10 percent chance something happens and you make a successful claim with the insurance in the next ten years. So on average, you get 10% of $2000 (=$200) from the insurance within 10 years. Per year, that makes $20. If you’re paying more than $20 a year, you’re spending more than you can expect to get back - on average.
Obviously, those are arbitrary numbers and they could be way off. But the insurance company will do the maths right to make sure they earn more than they spend. And it’s in their best interest to avoid customers who are likely to cost them more than they receive.
Of course there are cases where making a bad deal in a mathematical sense can still be beneficial overall. Your car loan is a good example, health insurance is another. And if photography really is the only thing that brings you joy, then you can accept a “bad deal” to make sure you can keep pursuing you hobby,
But an insurance is never a good way to save money. On a case-by-case basis, it can be, but on average, it isn’t. It’s like playing in a casino, you can leave with more money than you had before, but on average, the bank always wins (unless you’re cheating).
Insurance companies are very good at taking more money from you than they give back. The ones who don’t aren’t around anymore.
Insurance companies are very good at taking more money from you than they give back. The ones who don’t aren’t around anymore.
Oh, I agree with that. I don’t think anyone was thinking of insurance as an investment (except perhaps some interesting Youtube people and mutual whole life insurance policies), so this just seems like a weird way to think about it. Just like people who go to a casino - rational people aren’t looking at it as any sort of investment or deal, but paying for a certain type of entertainment.
I also wonder who’s looking at Insurance as a way to make them money? It’s to either smooth out costs without a required ramp up time (i.e. you might be able to dedicate $20 a year to self-insuring your camera gear, but better hope nothing happens for 10 years which BTW is getting close to the useful lifetime of the gear.) or to improve piece of mind. $150 a year to literally think of my risk with my camera gear going out / using it at $100 vs $11,000? That’s really cheap to me.
It depends on where you live and climate as well as what kind of camera and how much it costs. Usually I’m more worried about the camera falling and breaking. Pelican case for cinema cameras are great add some dessinant packs and refresh them now and then. Also cinema cameras are usually around or above $100K so yeah you get insurance for those. For a small prosumer camera, a soft pouch is all you need. Keep it close to you so you can use it all the time. If you store it too well you will never use it.
I just stick my camera (Canon R7 and/or 7D) in a regular bag with some desiccant packs to help the lens avoid fogging up when transition to different temperatures.
I have a Fuji x-t4 that gets tossed into a backpack with lenses in a separate pocket. No insurance. No issues so far.
Based on your picture, do you have a Fuji?
Looks like the x100v.
Sounds good, thank you for the reply. Yah, I have a Fuji, though a few year old. The recent purchase was a Sony actually.
