Poor Man's Photo Diary: Bags (2) -- Size Does Matter

[Lowepro's bags are very reliable]

I have a problem. I love buying bags, different kinds of bags.

On the surface, it seems I just love spending money on bags. But the real reason is because when I pack my equipments for different occasions, I don't like them to be loosely packed. I like to pack them in a way that they are all secured in their positions.

When I go to Chinese school every Sat, I normally bring one camera body with a lens attached. In this case, I need a small shoulder bag. If I decided to take some photos for folk dance class, I will bring one body and two lenses (17-55mm and 70-200mm). In this case, I use my sling bag. For Chinese New Year performance, I need two bodies, at least three lenses, and flash lights for backstage shots. And since most of the time I don't need to move, I just need a big bag for transporting these equipments. In this case, I use a big backpack.

In my mind, there is no perfect bag. When I buy bags, I first think about what occasion I want to use this bag. Secondly, I think about what and how many lenses I will carry for that occasion. When I take care of these two factors, I can roughly decide what size of bags I should take a look. The more important factor might be the second one since once you figure out what lenses to carry. You need to find a compartment wide and deep enough to accommodate the biggest lens you will carry and that indirectly also decides the overall size of the bag. The last thing will be selecting the color and the style for the bag from good brands like Lowepro, Kata, Crumpler, and Tamrac. As you can see the most important thing for me to consider when buying a bag is the right size.

Let me share my own experience to conclude this blog entry. At one point I was crazy about Crumpler's Million Dollar Home bags. They are like messenger bags and come with different sizes. Crumpler folks give them funny names like One Million Dollar Home, Two Million Dollar Home, up to Seven Million Dollar Home. The bags are well padded and stylish. But soon I found a problem. In order to secure the equipments inside the bag, Crumpler uses a big piece of Velcro and two buckles. The buckles are fine but the Velcro is a problem. When you need to access the equipments, you need to flip over the cover. At that time, the Velcro generates a loud noise. Imagine you are in a wedding and you run from the back to the front trying to shoot the lighting candle scene. You then realize you need to switch lenses, so you pull the cover and the next thing you know, every one is looking at you. This almost happened to me during one of my wedding shootings. I started to flip the cover and I hear the noise so I ran out of the church, opened the bag, switched the lens and ran back in. I then had to leave my bag open for the rest of the ceremony. So some of the bags looks both functional and nice but you won't know the problem until you really put them to use.

Didn't I say it already? There is no perfect bags - so you need more than one!