My hack is that I don't check baggage.<p>For my personal item, I use a backpack.  I have a nice, big L.L. Bean backpack that fits a ton of stuff in it.<p>For my carry-on, I use a soft bag of the appropriate size.  You might be able to compress more stuff into the hard case rollaways, but the nice thing about the soft bag is that it always makes it into the overhead compartment (unlike many of the hard case suitcases I've seen.)<p>But I guess if you're traveling with a <i>lot</i> of camera equipment you wouldn't have that option.