"Gearing, or the Forgotten Card Syndrome"

Every cameraman has been there at least once. You show up on set, backpack loaded with gear, you start plugging things in, pulling out freshly dusted lenses, the tripod is tossed somewhere in the corner of the room—because hey, it's a Manfrotto, it can take a beating—the sun is shining… Life feels pretty good. Until you flip the camera switch and see that terrifying message: "No Media." Cold sweat instantly. You naively check your pockets, dump out your entire backpack. Nothing. You literally have no cards. They’re sitting on the table back home. The sky suddenly turns pitch black. You open Google Maps and start searching for the nearest electronics store.

The Struggles of an Aspiring Cameraman

I’ve run out to buy brand-new cards more times than I’d like to admit. I remember back when I was working in TV, shooting daily news. My reporter colleague started making fun of me and even kept a diary called "Kubo's Struggles." One day it was a battery, next time cards, another day the tripod…

One Friday evening, we went to shoot a report at a theater. We figured it would take 15 minutes, maybe half an hour max. We got there, the play started, and I went to grab some b-roll. Except I didn't. The cards were left behind in the editing suite. I could literally see the "joy" in my reporter's eyes. Luckily, they were running the same play the next day, so we breathed a sigh of relief, planning to just swing by on Saturday. But to make things worse, they locked the theater doors right before the show started. It was just a small, intimate indie theater in a tiny town in the Považie region. Obviously, you're not going to interrupt the actors on stage like, "Excuse me, could you unlock the front door for us?" So we had to sit through the entire three-hour play. To be fair, the play was awesome—honestly one of the best I've ever seen, pure, raw, almost punk-rock art. But a guy can definitely imagine spending his Friday night doing something other than watching a play he has to see again tomorrow anyway.

Compared to what came later, television was a walk in the park. Camera, mic, light, tripod, batteries… Years later, at a different job, we were doing live streaming for events where the gear easily packed two full cars. Multicam, video switchers, 14 microphones, hundreds of meters of cables, monitors, computers… A total full-production kit. That’s when we finally started writing actual checklists in Google Docs just to keep track of what to pack and what not to forget.

Instead of Random Reminders — A Specialized Packing List

A year ago, when the idea for my app first crossed my mind, a gear management tool—Packing Lists—was one of the very first features I thought of. Initially, it was just a simple reminder. You type in the gear, you check it off as loaded or needs loading. But over time, I kept crafting it further, and today it’s a pretty smart tool. I'm trying to implement features where, for example, if you add a focal length to your shotlist that you want to shoot a scene with, and the app finds that specific focal length in your inventory, it will suggest it straight away when you're building your packing list. If it finds the camera body that goes with that lens? It grabs that too.

Recently, I added setups to the profile section. Think of them like rigs. I shoot a lot of different styles—a documentary calls for completely different gear than a wedding or a commercial. So now you can build your own custom setup, like a "Documentary Run 'n' Gun Kit," throw in your cameras, lights, lenses, filters, batteries, or whatever else, and then dump the whole thing into your packing list with a single click.

On top of that, a battery planner comes in handy. This one acts pretty smart too. You add your batteries, build out the rig that the battery powers, and it tells you exactly how much shooting time you'll get. But it doesn't stop there. You add your charger, the number of hours you plan to shoot, and it calculates whether your batteries will survive in a continuous charging loop. This saved my life at weddings. 12 hours of shooting, I went out with a brand-new setup: 4 NPF batteries and a dual-slot charger, thinking it would be plenty. It wasn’t. I forgot to check if that specific charger took 8 hours to juice up a single battery…

Prepping and packing gear before a shoot is a whole chapter on its own, and gear chaos is a problem we will probably never fully solve. It’s just part of the craft—and anyone who claims otherwise has either never shot anything substantial or simply refuses to admit it. That's why smart tools like this are always a lifesaver. Instead of filling out messy reminders and random spreadsheets, you can manage everything in a relatively highly intelligent way.

But seriously, double-check your cards one more time before you walk out the door. I know what I'm talking about.