How to protect fragile equipment?

Question

A bit of background information:

The obvious answer is 'Just buy a camera bag!', but that's where things get a little bit more complicated. Lately I started looking around for my first prime lens and while reading reviews for Canon's 50mm f1.4 I stumbled across comments like 'The autofocus stopped working, after I took it out of my camera bag'*. There seems to be some construction weakness that can make the autofocus rails break, when pressure is applied to the tube. There might be more examples, I'm not trying to bash this lens.

Equipment getting broken due high usage or clumsiness is a risk I can live with, but the thought of gear 'committing suicide' in a camera bag makes me cringe.

To cut a long story short:

How do you protect 'raw eggs' in your collection, when the padding of your camera bag just isn't enough?

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* This is not a word by word translation.

Asked by Ria

Answer

Most of the time, all of my gear is in a camera bag. There's always going to be the strange accident, but I'm confident that my bags are giving some (enough) protection to keep my gear safe from the odd bump. For the more severe environment and use, I have a Pelican 1550 hard case with foam that will help keep the gear safe.

But once out of the camera bag or hard case, it's in the most dangerous environment of all! Walking around with the camera slung over my shoulder or balanced in my hand, it's far more likely to be damaged if I bump something, if somebody bumps me, if it falls to the floor, or even if it bangs against my pocket with keys and phone inside. The out-of-bag use is where I'm more concerned with my gear. While I don't doubt that occasionally something just breaks for no apparent reason, I must wonder what dings the 50 1.4 you read of took before it stopped working, and what damage was done prior.

Answered by Dan Wolfgang

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