Innerspace Cases · North Hollywood
Pelican cases on set
A cinematographer's guide to protecting the tools that make the image — and to the part most guides skip: what goes inside the case.
Request a Custom Quote Find your case by sizeThere is a particular sound familiar to anyone who has spent enough mornings around a camera truck: carts rolling down a liftgate, latches snapping open, radio chatter beginning to fill the air, and hard cases appearing one after another as the equipment package comes to life.
Before the camera is built, before the first lens is mounted and certainly before anyone calls for a rehearsal, there are cases. A lot of them.
On professional productions the case is not packaging. It is part of the equipment system.
A good case protects the camera while it is traveling. A great case also makes the camera department faster when it arrives.
That distinction is the whole subject of this piece. For decades Pelican has occupied an unusually visible position in that world, because the underlying problem has never changed: expensive equipment must move through airports, trucks, stages, deserts, rain, dust, baggage systems and occasionally rather unsympathetic loading docks — and it needs to arrive ready to work.
We have been building the interiors of those cases in Los Angeles for over a hundred years, first as a trunk and luggage maker and now as a case shop. So this guide covers both halves: which Pelican shell fits the job, and what to put inside it.
The case is part of the camera package
A cinema camera is rarely a camera. By the time it reaches the operator it may include a body, lens, viewfinder, wireless video transmitter, focus motor, MDR, timecode hardware, matte box, filters, battery plate, media, cables and perhaps several brackets whose absence can stop an otherwise very expensive system from functioning.
The same is true of lighting and digital-imaging equipment. A DIT package may contain readers, storage, network adapters, converters, calibration instruments, power supplies and dozens of short cables whose individual value is modest but whose collective importance becomes very apparent when one goes missing.
This is why case selection should begin with workflow, not merely dimensions. What needs to remain assembled? What must be visible immediately when the lid opens? What is consumed during the shooting day? What changes from job to job? What will be checked as baggage? And what is so mission-critical that there needs to be another one somewhere else on the truck?
Once those questions are answered, Pelican's seemingly enormous catalog begins to make much more sense.
What we actually do
Pelican makes the shell. We make the part that decides whether the case is merely protective or genuinely useful.
CNC-cut foam
Cut to your gear, not to a generic outline. Every cavity is a specific object, which makes the case an inventory system you can read at a glance.
Fleet standardisation
Rental houses and camera departments running matched packages get identical interiors across every unit, re-orderable years later.
Engraving & lid logos
Asset tags, department marks and house branding, so a case coming back from a distant location knows where it belongs.
Most of what follows is about choosing a shell. Keep in mind while you read it that the shell is the substrate. The interior is the product.
Protector: the familiar black rectangle of production
If there is a visual shorthand for professional equipment transport, it may be the black Pelican Protector case. Pelican describes the line as watertight, crushproof and dustproof, and it ranges from compact cases for electronics and accessories through rolling cases and long-format transport cases.
For film crews the important part is not simply durability. It is the number of useful footprints.
The small Protectors: 1120 through 1450
The smaller cases suit the pieces of a camera system that are simultaneously compact, valuable and easy to misplace — media and readers, wireless components, small monitors, timecode equipment, lens-control components, meters, filters, specialty optics, test instruments, and the small collection of adapters without which some elaborate piece of technology suddenly becomes a paperweight.
A 1200, 1300 or 1400 is not a camera truck. It is a compartment. That is precisely why these sizes are so useful: instead of opening a huge case to locate a single transmitter, the department dedicates a small case to a specific function and labels it accordingly.
1500, 1510 and 1520: the working middle
The 1510 deserves special mention. Its proportions have made it an exceptionally useful mobile equipment case — a lens-accessory case, wireless case, assistant's technical kit, small-camera package, DIT support case, or a carefully divided collection of whatever a production cannot afford to leave behind.
It is also the single most common shell we cut foam for.
1550 through 1660: when a kit becomes a package
Cases such as the 1550, 1560, 1600, 1610, 1620, 1640, 1650 and 1660 move beyond accessory duty into substantial equipment-package territory. This is where a hard case becomes a department unto itself.
There is an operational advantage to larger rolling cases that has nothing to do with impact resistance: organisation survives transportation. When the lid opens, the equipment has a repeatable location. The missing cable is noticed immediately, because there is an empty space where the cable belongs.
1690, 1700, 1720 and 1750: long equipment needs long cases
Cinema produces awkward objects. Tripod components, rigging, slider hardware, long accessories, specialty optics, support equipment. Pelican categorises its long Protector cases as appropriate for elongated equipment including tripods. The advantage is obvious: long equipment can be contained rather than strapped precariously to something else.
Air: when every pound has a destination
The most expensive case is sometimes the case you have to pay to fly. Camera equipment is dense. Batteries are dense. Lenses are dense. Grip hardware appears to have been designed in open defiance of airline scales. The shell does not need to add unnecessary mass.
Pelican states that Air cases can be up to 40% lighter than other polymer cases, using its HPX² construction while retaining the protective intent of a professional hard case.
The 1507 suits a compact camera build, lens-support package, monitors or wireless systems. The 1525 moves into an extremely useful middle size. The 1535 combines a highly practical carry-on footprint with the weight advantage that defines the series — which is why it is one of the most requested shells we build into.
One note from the loading dock: colour can be operational. A stack of identical black cases requires labels. A strategically coloured case is recognised from ten metres away. Green is the lens-support case. Silver is media. On a busy load-in, visual identification is not trivial.
Storm: protection with a different handshake
The Storm family is immediately related to the broader Pelican ecosystem, but the interaction is different. The defining feature is Pelican's Press & Pull latch, which locks automatically and is designed to open with a light touch.
That sounds like a small ergonomic decision. On set, small ergonomic decisions accumulate. A crew member may open and close the same case dozens of times in a working day, and latch behaviour becomes considerably more significant after hour ten than it appeared in a product photograph.
Storm is less a different answer than a different interface to the same problem. Protect the equipment. Get into it quickly. Get back to work.
Vault: hard-case logic at a different price point
Not every object on a production requires the most expensive transport solution available, and not every department has an unlimited case budget. Pelican positions Vault as a more affordable protective family built from high-impact polymer for rugged, weather-resistant use.
One caveat worth stating plainly, because it is often assumed otherwise: the Vault line is weather-resistant rather than IP67-rated. For cables, hardware, mounting equipment and production electronics that is entirely adequate. For gear that may sit in standing water, specify a Protector, Storm or Air instead.
Buy the case for the equipment's actual transportation risk, not for the perceived prestige of the object inside it. A $200 component that prevents a $100,000 camera system from operating is not really a $200 component at call time.
Micro: cases for the things that stop the shoot
The smallest item creates the largest problem. A media adapter. A proprietary cable. A remote trigger. A specialty connector that exists nowhere within fifty miles of the location.
Pelican's M40, M50 and M60 Micro designs are IP67-rated, with dual latches, a padlock hole, a removable liner, an automatic pressure-equalisation valve and an O-ring seal. Pelican describes the IP67 parameter as submersion to one metre for up to 30 minutes.
These work particularly well as subsystems inside larger systems. A Micro case can live inside a larger Pelican, giving small and delicate components their own enclosure while keeping them associated with the parent package. It is a case within a case, but on a difficult location that redundancy looks a good deal less eccentric.
Foam, dividers or TrekPak?
Choosing the shell is only half the decision. The interior determines whether the case is simply protective or genuinely useful — and this is the part we get called about.
Foam: when the package is known
Foam is excellent when the configuration is relatively permanent. The visual logic is immediate: every object has a cavity, every cavity should contain an object. That is good protection and good inventory control. The weakness is flexibility — change enough components and yesterday's perfect layout becomes tomorrow's archaeological record.
This is the distinction that matters most on this page. Pelican's stock Pick N Pluck foam is a grid of cubes you pull out by hand; it is fine, and it is what ships in the box. Custom CNC foam is cut from your actual equipment list — correct clearances, finger reliefs where you need to lift something out, a cavity shaped like the lens rather than a rectangle roughly the size of it. On a package that gets opened forty times a day, the difference is not cosmetic.
Padded dividers: when the package evolves
Dividers suit camera departments because camera packages change. One job has two zooms. The next has five primes. A third adds wireless focus hardware and an onboard monitor. A configurable divider system lets the case evolve with the equipment rather than forcing the equipment to conform to a permanent cutout.
TrekPak: when space itself becomes equipment
TrekPak-style organisation occupies an interesting middle ground. Its thin divider structure creates defined compartments without consuming as much interior volume as thick traditional dividers.
The goal is not to fit the maximum possible number of things into a case. It is to fit the maximum useful number of things into a case while retaining immediate access to them. That is a very different calculation.
Send us the gear list
Tell us the shell and what goes in it — camera body, lens set, wireless, whatever the package actually is — and we will lay out the interior and quote it. In-catalog builds run 14–21 business days. We reply the same business day, Monday to Friday, 8AM–5PM PT.
Request a Custom Quote 818-767-3030Building a Pelican system for a camera department
The most effective case package is rarely a collection of unrelated boxes. It is a hierarchy.
A compact professional camera department might separate its equipment into camera bodies, lenses, wireless systems, filters, media, DIT hardware, power accessories, specialty tools and long-form support equipment. The exact Pelican numbers matter less than maintaining that architecture.
Someone unfamiliar with the package should be able to read the labels and understand it. Someone familiar with it should know where an item is without thinking. And at wrap, an empty compartment should be obvious.
That is the difference between owning cases and designing a case system. If you are outfitting more than one identical package — a rental fleet, a multi-camera show, a touring kit — standardising the interiors is where the real time is recovered, and volume pricing applies. That is the core of what we do on custom builds.
Every Pelican case, measured
Choosing a case usually comes down to one question that catalogs answer badly: will the gear actually fit? Exterior dimensions are what get published. Interior dimensions are what matter.
So here is the whole line, from Pelican's own specification data — 202 models with true interior and exterior dimensions, empty weight and certification. Type a model number, filter by line, or enter the dimensions of the thing you need to protect and the table will show only cases it fits inside.
| Model | Line | Interior L x W x H | Exterior L x W x H | Empty wt | Certification |
|---|
Gold underline = we carry that exact case, link goes to its page. Grey = we do not stock it; link goes to the line it belongs to. Blank certification means Pelican publishes none for that model — notably the entire Vault line, which is weather-resistant rather than IP67.
Dimensions are Pelican's published figures in inches and describe the moulded shell only; foam, dividers and lid organisers reduce usable interior space. If you are matching a specific kit, our case finder works from interior clearance, and we will confirm fit before anything is cut.
Found the shell? The inside is the part we build.
Send the model and your gear list and we will lay out the interior, confirm clearances and quote it — single units or matched fleets. In-catalog builds run 14–21 business days.
Request a Custom Quote See foam optionsThe model directory
Below is every Pelican hard case in our reference set, with the fastest route to each one. 66 of the 91 configurations listed we carry ourselves, and those link to our own page, where you can see specifications, buy the bare shell, or have the interior built. The remaining 25 are models we do not stock — Micro, Cargo, Adventure and the G5 — and those link to Amazon.
Coolers, soft bags, backpacks and Pelican luggage are intentionally excluded. Amazon's catalog changes continuously: parent and child listings merge, and configurations move between ASINs. Confirm the model, colour and interior configuration on the listing before ordering.
Protector
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1120 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1120 | With foam | Orange | View our page → |
| 1150 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1170 | With foam | Orange | View our page → |
| 1200 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1200 | With foam | Desert Tan | View our page → |
| 1200 | With foam | OD Green | View our page → |
| 1200 | With foam | Yellow | View our page → |
| 1300 | No foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1300 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1400 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1400 | With foam | Orange | View our page → |
| 1450 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1460TOOL | Tool organizer | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1460EMS | Three-tray | Orange | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1500 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1500 | With foam | Orange | View our page → |
| 1510 | Pick N Pluck foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1520 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1520 | With foam | Orange | View our page → |
| 1520 | With foam | Silver | View our page → |
| 1520 | No foam | Silver | View our page → |
| 1550 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1560 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1560 | Padded dividers | Black | View our page → |
| 1600 | No foam | Black | Buy from us → |
| 1600 | Pick N Pluck foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1610 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1610 | Custom foam/wheels | Black / Red | Buy from us → |
| 1610 | TrekPak | Desert Tan / Black | View our page → |
| 1620 | No foam | Black | Buy from us → |
| 1620 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1640 | Configuration varies | Black | View our page → |
| 1650 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1650 | No foam | Black | Buy from us → |
| 1650 | With foam | Desert Tan | View our page → |
| 1650 | With foam | OD Green | View our page → |
| 1660 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1660 | No foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1690 | No foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1690 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1690 | With foam | Desert Tan | View our page → |
| 1700 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1720 | With foam | Desert Tan | View our page → |
| 1750 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
Air
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1507 | No foam | Silver | Buy from us → |
| 1525 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| 1525 | TrekPak | Black | View our page → |
| 1535 | With foam | Black / Red | View our page → |
| 1535 | With foam | Black / Blue | View our page → |
| 1535 | TrekPak | Trekking Green / Lime | View our page → |
| 1535 | Empty | Charcoal / Silver | Buy from us → |
Storm
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| iM2050 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| iM2050 | With foam | Yellow | View our page → |
| iM2200 | No foam | Black | View our page → |
| iM2200 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| iM2200 | With foam | Yellow | View our page → |
| iM2620 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
Vault
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| V100 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| V100 | Padded dividers | Black | View our page →closest configuration |
| V100 | With foam | OD Green | View our page → |
| V200 | Pre-cut specialty foam | Black | View our page →closest configuration |
| V300 | Padded dividers | Black | View our page →closest configuration |
| V300PF5 | Pre-cut specialty foam | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| V525 | Padded dividers | Black | View our page →closest configuration |
| V700 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| V770 | With foam | Black | View our page → |
| V800 | With foam | Tan | View our page → |
| V250 | No foam | Black | View our page → |
Micro
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1010 | Standard | Black / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1010 | Standard | Red | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1010 | Standard | Blue / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1020 | Standard | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1020 | Standard | Red / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1040 | Standard | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1040 | Standard | Yellow / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1040 | Standard | Black / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| 1060 | Standard | Maroon Red / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M40 | Standard | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M40 | Standard | Yellow / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M40 | Standard | Black / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M50 | Standard | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M50 | Standard | Black / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M50 | Standard | Yellow / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M50 | Standard | Blue / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M60 | Standard | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| M60 | Standard | Black / Clear | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
Personal Utility
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| G5 | RFID field wallet | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
| G5 | RFID field wallet | Silver | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
Cargo
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| BX80 | Vehicle cargo case | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
Adventure
| Model | Configuration | Colour | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| TX80 | Vehicle/adventure case | Black | Amazon ↗we don't stock this |
The case you never think about is doing its job
There is a revealing moment at the end of a production day. The camera is stripped. Media is accounted for. Lenses return to their compartments. Wireless equipment disappears into labelled cavities. Cables are coiled. Lids close.
One by one, the equipment that spent the day creating images becomes anonymous black rectangles again.
The photography may have been delicate. The lighting may have been subtle. The technology inside the cases may represent several generations of sensor development, optical engineering and digital signal processing. But between locations, all of that sophistication depends on something wonderfully unsophisticated: a strong box with a good seal and reliable latches.
That is perhaps why hard cases have remained such a constant presence while everything inside them continues to change. Cameras become smaller. Resolution increases. Media changes. Wireless systems proliferate. Lenses come back into fashion decades after they were manufactured.
A case has a simpler assignment.
Protect the tools. Organise the tools. Get them to the next shot. And then get out of the way.
Built in North Hollywood
Innerspace Cases has been making case interiors in Los Angeles for over a century. If you know the shell, we can build what goes inside it — single units or matched fleets. Our workshop is open by appointment.
Request a Custom Quote Shop Known FitsPelican, Protector, Air, Storm, Vault, Micro, Pick N Pluck and TrekPak are trademarks of Pelican Products, Inc. Specification and certification claims describing Pelican products are Pelican's own. Innerspace Cases is an authorised Pelican dealer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Reference set current as of 17 August 2026.