Recently I bought a new camera bag that I could use for traveling with as well as a new home for my expanding 5×4 kit. Its a Lowepro Pro Trekker 400, not a small bag but is surprisingly light and, importantly, Lowepro say its Carry-on compatible.

I was a little unsure on the size but couldn’t find anything else suitable really. I need one that can carry the 5×4, some Canon kit and a laptop. A week later i find myself panicking that really its to damn big so I do some research to see what the sizes are for Carry-on with the airlines I use. What I find is that while they are in the same ballpark there are some big differences.

Widths of bags can vary as much as 10cm, depths and heights 5-6cm.

I’m kind of confused as to why?!? I would of thought that there would be a standardization of this between airlines and aircraft manufacturers so everyone knows were they stand. Instead you end up with a bit of a lottery as to whether your bag is gonna be ok to take on the plane or not.

So I took a little trip to the airport to try the bag in a few of the cages they have there for measuring Carry-on.

It fits in Easyjet’s with out a problem, which is good because I prefer to fly with them, but it wouldn’t go anywhere near Ryanair’s and Flybe’s was a really tight squeeze, in fact so tight I didn’t bother forcing the bag in. There is all of about 2-5cm variation in depth there and its a shock how much difference it made. Maybe that’s why the variation, no-one can agree on the right size, or some airlines want to cram more baggage into smaller lockers!

So as I can’t just fly Easyjet all the time, and some international airlines spec the same size as Ryanair, the bag is up for sale and I’m back to trying to find a suitable one. Which isn’t to bad ’cause I do like a bit of kit research!