Upgrading My Camera Bag: Pelican 1510 Next Generation Protector Case

By Luke Cuenco • Published August 3, 2026

For the better part of a decade, my camera case was a no-name FDE hard shell I bought from a local Tractor Supply Co. store, the kind of thing that looks like a Pelican from ten feet away and functions like one until you actually open it up. There was no interior organization to speak of. Camera body, batteries, lens cleaning kit, all of it lived together in one jumbled mass at the bottom, and finding anything specific meant digging through the pile like I was panning for gold. It worked, in the loosest possible sense of the word, but after enough shoots and over a decade of equipment upgrades, I decided it was finally time to replace it with something built for the job rather than something that merely resembled the job. In pursuit of this, today we’re reviewing Pelican’s new Next Generation Protector Series, specifically the Pelican 1510, which I picked up as a dedicated home for my ever-expanding collection of daily camera gear.

More from Pelican @ AllOutdoor:

Upgrading My Camera Bag: Pelican 1510 Next Generation Protector Case

Product Link: https://www.pelican.com/us/en/product/cases/protector/1510?sku=015100-0170-130-310

Pelican recently rolled out the Next Generation Protector line as an update to some of its most established case sizes, including the 1400, 1510, 1560, and 1650. The core case is still built on the same philosophy that’s made Pelican a household name in this space since the 1970s (something I only learned recently), but the new generation brings a tougher proprietary high-impact HPX polymer resin build, a new push-button latch option alongside the classic double throw latches, and a modular lid ecosystem for all the bits and pieces of gear that don’t quite fit in any of the bigger spaces.

The Pelican 1510 specifically caught my eye because Pelican markets it as sized to the maximum airline carry-on allowance, which matters to me since I travel with this gear quite often. I’d warn you just as Pelican does that this depends on the airline, and their own product page notes you should check with your specific carrier for exact measurement requirements before assuming it fits in every overhead bin. I haven’t personally put that claim to the test yet, but I’ve seen plenty of other 1510s in the wild for long enough to know they’re definitely allowed on most, if not all, airlines as carry-on bags. It’s been a slower summer for flying, and most of my use so far has come from camping and shooting trips with friends rather than actual airports. But the carry-on size was still a deciding factor going in, as I also don’t want to be dragging around a huge camera case all the time for my rather miniaturized camera setup.

As a bonus to all this, the 1510 is now available in partnership with ColorCase, which is an official authorized distributor and custom builder of authentic Pelican protective hard cases. They specialize in letting customers mix and match the visual components of their Pelican cases like shell colors, latches, handles, and wheels, so they can create something that fits with the rest of their gear or is at the very least truly unique to them. This extends to the ability for Pelican to offer special personalized name plate tags – for mine, I just went with a green/tan case and trim, with the standard Pelican placards, which can always be personalized later.

Configuration

Pelican allows a lot of customization now for almost all of their cases right on the website. I went with the padded divider interior rather than the standard foam, mainly because I figured an adjustable divider system would serve my constantly changing lens rotation better than pulling foam and hoping the pluck pattern happened to line up with what I actually own. That turned out to be the right call. The padded divider set is a sewn tub, with a run of padded, ballistic nylon dividers that attach to the tub and to each other with hook-and-loop fasteners. There’s no cutting, no measuring, no committing to a layout with a knife in your hand. You just move the dividers around by hand until your gear sits where you want it, and you can reshuffle the whole thing in a few minutes if your kit changes.

And my kit is not exactly small either, which is why I had to “move out” of the smaller case I had before. Between the GH5 body, four lenses I rotate through regularly, a tripod, a shotgun mic, a lav mic, and six spare batteries just for the camera, that’s already a lot to account for. Add in two GoPro tripods, the GoPro itself, spare batteries for it, a mic stick, charging cables, and a small mountain of lens cleaning tools, and you start to see why my old case never had a chance, as it awas already overflowing with just 80% of the things I needed for a simple shoot.

The padded dividers handle the bigger, more structured items like the camera body, the lenses, the tripod, that sort of thing, while the case’s built-in mesh lid pouches with zippered closures turned out to be exactly where all my smaller loose gear and disposable items belong. The mic stick, charging cables, lens cleaning cloths, and other odds and ends that used to just float around loose in the bottom of my old case now have a dedicated, zippered home in the lid, which means I’m not excavating the main compartment every time I need something small. Between the two systems, I finally have an actual place for every piece of necessary gear, which sounds minor right up until you’re packing up in the dark after a night-vision shoot and don’t want to wake up to a messy camera case in the morning.

The Human Interface

I think one thing that often gets overlooked in bag/case reviews is how they interface with arguably one of the most important parts of the system – you. One of the bigger changes in the Next Generation lineup is the option of push-button latches alongside Pelican’s classic double throw design, and going in, I assumed I’d prefer the push buttons. From what I’ve experienced with other Pelican cases and other push-button style latches, they’re easier to operate with some gloves and read as the more modern choice on paper. I ended up going with the double throw latches anyway, and in practice that’s worked out better for how I actually use this case, as it allowed me to actually access the zippered pouches in the lid without worrying about accidentally collapsing the lid.

Most of my shooting happens outdoors on uneven ground, and the double throw latches let the lid stay propped open on its own more reliably than I expected. On a slope or on rocky terrain, a log, or just the natural grading of the ground, having the case pop open and just stay open, without you needing to prop it or hold it, is a genuinely useful feature that nobody puts on a spec sheet. You probably won’t appreciate this unless you’ve also found yourself kneeling in the dirt trying to grab a lens with rifle slung, lens in one hand, all while the lid tries to swing shut on the other that’s still holding the camera body.

Durability and Build

I haven’t put the Pelican 1510 through anything close to a worst-case scenario yet, and I really don’t want to since it contains some very expensive equipment I’m somewhat emotionally attached to. No drops off a truck bed, no dunking in a river, nothing dramatic. However, my typical summer schedule of camping and shooting trips is a reasonable start, but it’s not the same as years of abuse, and I want to be honest about that rather than pretend a handful of trips up and down some steep unpaved mountain roads is a “heavy duty” test. What I can say is that the HPX polymer construction feels every bit as solid as Pelican’s reputation suggests, and the latches, hinges, and purge valve all still operate exactly like they did out of the box. The case has been tossed in the back of the truck bed often, dragged across rocks and gravel, and generally treated like gear rather than a museum piece, and it hasn’t shown a mark for it. Whether it holds up over years of that treatment is a question I genuinely can’t answer yet, but the foundation is clearly there. The biggest challenge for me, given my rather rugged shooting environments, is going to be resisting buying more Pelican cases for my other range electronics.

The base Pelican 1510 with the standard foam interior currently runs $269.95 direct from Pelican, which I think is a steal for what you’re getting. Configured with the padded divider set instead, which is what I have, total cost typically lands somewhat higher, since the divider set is sold as its own accessory when purchased separately and generally runs somewhere around $100 to $140 on top of the case itself, depending on the retailer but well worth the cost if you’re trying to protect many thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment. That puts the total closer to $370 to $410 all in. It’s not pocket change for a camera case, but if something goes wrong and your case takes an impact, it’s a reasonable trade if it’ll protect your gear.

Final Thoughts

Just a few months in and the Pelican 1510 has done exactly what I needed it to do. I literally have no complaints. The case, which is somewhere in the upper half of the smaller side of the Pelican case hierarchy, has taken a disorganized pile of expensive gear and turned it into something I can pack, carry, fly, and actually work efficiently out of. Obviously, my specific example is not going to be the right case for everyone. If you’re not hauling this much gear, or you don’t need a dedicated divider system to keep it all sorted (or a different style entirely), there are simpler and cheaper options that will serve you just fine. But for someone running a micro four thirds or a full-frame setup alongside a bunch of other odds and ends that come with being a camera nerd, this has been a solid upgrade over what it replaced. I still haven’t tested Pelican’s carry-on claim for myself, and I don’t feel like I really need to since it’s a well-established thing, but on the ground, it’s earned the reputation that Pelican is known for when it comes to protecting your stuff.

The post Upgrading My Camera Bag: Pelican 1510 Next Generation Protector Case appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.