Camera Bag Brands: What do You Like Best?

[Greg]

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

[Jim Noel]

I believe all camera bages are severely over-priced. I buy my "bags" at camping stores.

[Drew Bedo]

Nice Jim; How do you pack the gear inside the camping store bag?

I can think of ways . . .how do you do it?

You may be ight about prices. I don't think I have a bag that was bought new. Most were full of photo gear that I bought. In the old days (the 1980s and '90s) I used to see nice bags in pawn shops. They practically gave them away if you bought something. Sometimes I'd buy a ratty looking bag for a few dollars just for the padded dividers.

[fuegocito]

Who is the best at designing and making camera bags?
What do you-all like and why?

I think this is too vague a question, since there are different camera types, applications and users, there can not be any consensus as to the the one/best designer of camera carrying systems. For example; if you need indestructible you have your Pelicans, if you want cheap you have your camping/army surplus varieties, if you want cuteness or being all swanky you might want a Crumpler/Thinktank, if you going to be a mountaineer you might seek a F-stop. Even the big boy like Lowepro is trying to diversify...so at the end of the day, unless you only have one camera (system) you most likely end up with many different camera bags.

[Drew Bedo]

The pool of experience and knowledge on this forum is deep and wide.

What I was trying for in the OP was to see what folks felt about the overall quality and design coming from various brands of bag makers/sellers.

For Instance, I do like Pelocan hard cases, but not Pelican soft bags. As it turns out, they are made by different companies. I also like LowePro bags, They have worked well and stood up well in hard usage. Yet I have not sought out, selected and bought any of these bags. They all came to me as a side-bar to other purchases.

In this thread and the poll,I was looking to access the experience and preference of the membership here on LFP.info. That folks strongly recommend this or that for 35mm/DSLE and MF equipment was an unintended surprise.

That many members did not respond here but did vote "Other" in the related poll was also a surprise.

I will give this a rest for a while and re-visite the topic again in a year or so, with a better crafted pair of thread questions.

[12pmc]

This is all good information and is most helpful. I use a Swiss made skiing backpack by Ortovox (20 litre) and have fashioned a foam insert to hold the gear - 4x5, couple lens, meter, filters, film-holders etc from moving around. The small loops on the side of the pack (designed for carrying skis) allow you to carry a tripod without trouble.

But I would like to know, if anyone knows, a manufacture of camera backpacks which have re-movable shoulder straps and a normal carry handle.

Thanks
Peter

[scheinfluger_77]

Though I haven't been out in the field yet, I just purchased a Tamrac Anvil 27 bag new (not cheap). With a little creative rearrangement of the big dividers I have my 2D 5x7, 6 film holders, slots for three lenses and a light meter all in the main compartment; not counting the lid and the external pockets. The camera sits crosswise in the bottom and the whole set up is about 20 lbs w/o tripod. With that big wide waist strap the bag rides like it's no weight at all, and I'm 63, 50-60 lbs overweight. If I stick to one lens (no fun in that) I could probably add another 4 film holders in the main compartment.