In my travels I get to meet many other photographers both pros and amateurs alike.  I’m always taken back by the amount of photographers I meet who do not have any sort of camera insurance. Yet they are carrying thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment.  As someone who carts my gear all over the place I find having camera insurance as necessary as having a backup of my photos. I also find it takes a lot of the stress out of traveling. While no one wants to have their gear stolen, I can rest easy knowing that if anything happens I’m covered.

Once you have invest a serious amount of money into your photography equipment its time to get serious about protecting your investment. When you stop to think about it, there are so many ways in-witch insurance can benefit you. If your on a trip and you camera bag is stolen, lost, damaged etc what will you do? If shelling out the money to replace all your gear is not an issue for you then you can stop reading right here, but for the rest of us, we need some sort of protection.

Many people claim that their homeowners or renters insurance will cover there gear. This however, from my experience is often not the case. Many insurance plans for you home or apartment will not cover your gear if they consider the use ‘professional’. From my reading on the subject that can cover just about anyone. Even if you not a full time pro but maybe you have sold a photo, or shot a wedding. Your insurance company may consider you a professional and therefor deny the claim.

Also will your current insurance cover you when you travel? How about travel outside of the country?

There are a number of insurance companies that are dedicated to photographers. The only one that I have experience is TCP Insurance. I have nothing but positive things to say about them. You can get a quote online in just a few minutes, it only takes a half hour to setup a coverage and its very affordable. Not only will they cover your camera, lenses, bags, laptops, (all the things you take with you) they will also cover your home computer. For those of us with a lot of money invested in our computer setup this is yet another reason to get insurance.

With the amount of gear I carry around, I would not consider not having insurance and I hope you would not either.

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