My past and present experiences by film format and brand:
35mm & FX: Covered events of Riverfront Recapture from 1988 till 3 years ago. Events took place in all kinds of weather. Started out with the largest Domke with a side waist belt attached. Worked great for years but always seemed to get into the way when trying to weave through a crowd. Replaced it with a large Australian made Crumpler backpack. To access the interior you had to take it off and unzip it on the side that had rested on your back. Great security feature (no one can unzip you bag from behind) but a pain to use. Last was a Lowe Sling backpack. Worked absolutely great. Access to interior without taking the bag off my back by slinging the bag to be in front of you. Zipper broke after a few years of hard use... one phone call to Lowe and they replaced the bag with a new one for free.
Crumpler: had and sold 3 of them. I just love their concepts of bag design, but just never seemed to work for me. The bags are superbly made though. Found that pricing in the USA was all over the board, and by looking around I got some great bargains on new Crumpler bags.
6x7: Large Lowe backpack. Holds a ton of stuff including a 500mm optic.
Domke Outback (backpack): No longer made but available on EBay. Excellent bags for certain uses. When on a college teaching trip to Ireland, used one as a carry-on. It held a 35mm Nikon system with 3 lenses and a Bronica 6x7 with 3 lenses... all in that one carry-on backpack. Came in 2 sizes. Seemed like either of these 2 models of the Outback either worked amazingly well (6x7 Pentax system) or not (4x5 Chamonix system).
4x5 Chamonix: Think Tank Airport. Simply efficiently just holds my total system (camera, reflex finder, 5-6 lenses, dark cloth, film holders, meter, and more). I think it's the ideal backpack for a 4x5 flatbed view system.
4x5 Sinar Norma: Sinar's rather large OEM gray case made to carry their 4x5 Norma Expert system in. Easily holds a extensive complete system. Case probably dates back to the 1960s.
Whole Plate Chamonix: Initially wanted to adapt a backpack to carry the system. A large Lowe backpack did work out but space usage with this camera seemed to be less than ideal. Ended up using a Pelican hard case with moveable dividers. Am seriously thinking about getting a F.64 Extra Large 8x10 Backpack from the ViewCamera store in the near future.
8x10 Sinar Norma: Got an older used Sinar OEM case for their 8x10 Norma but never could figure out how to fold up the camera to fit neatly inside the case. In any case adapted the case for my 11x14.
11x14 Chamonix: completely gutted an older large Sinar case except for the right side where there is a row of slots to fit lenses mounted on Sinar boards. Above the lenses a pad then misc. stuff (meter, notebook, magnifier, etc.) To the left side, completely gutted it and padded the sides and top and bottom with cut workshop high density floor pads from LOWES... camera fits like a glove and is super protected by the high density floor pads. Sheet of padding on top of camera and hold several film holders and the dark cloth.
Greg
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