Bag it

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Here’s another entry on photographic toys. After I moved from my old Konica-Minolta Maxxum 5D DSLR to the D300, the containers i.e. bags had to get changed too. I’ve been using an old Lowepro camera bag for years now and that can hold just the D300 attached with a single lens and little else.

During the run-up to the Ayara Hilltops vacation I looked around for a camera bag that I’d be able to bring too. I settled on a backpack early, since I needed it to be dual-purpose to store some travel items too (waterbottle, passports, a book to read). It also had a couple of additional requirements. Be able to comfortably hold the D300 with the usually-attached 18-55mm VR, the SB-600 Speedlight, and the Sigma 10-20mm.

Funnily, there aren’t very many useful places to go to when it comes to reading up about camera bags. OK, so there’s Amazon user reviews and manufacturer sites of course, but there aren’t many sites for user reviews apart from CamBags.com, which is now permanently bookmarked on my browser. That’s quite a marvelous site, since it’s user-reviewed and more importantly, has tons of pictures demonstrating how photographer enthusiasts store their gear in each bag.

So, I picked up the Tamrac Adventure 7 bag (right hand side in this picture) for the Ayara trip. Love the red color and how camera-bag inconspicuous it looks.:)

One thing though. The Adventure 7 bag can’t hold everything, has no space to grow, and it’s funny bringing an additional backpack into the office when I need to bring my camera to school. So, just recently, it was back to CamBags, and after looking through the range of choices, I picked up a second bag; an Adventure Messenger 5 this time. A shoulder one this time to bring on day-trips or to/fro the office. Dimensions wise, this bag is indeed smaller, but unlike the Adventure 7, all its space in the former is for camera equipment. The damn thing can hold even a notebook.:)

So, pretty different purposes, but yet quite usable in their own way. Oh yeah. The stuff toy in this picture is only there to fill up the excess space in the photo frame.:)