Bill Pierce
Well-known
I keep wondering how people carry their cameras and related gear. In the old days, a lot of us use to use the Brady Trout Bag. You’d pick one up at the Queen’s Fishery in London before you headed out to somewhere else. It was a nice camera bag, and a day off in London helped minimize jet lag.
(And almost everyone had to listen to the clerks say, “Mr. McCullin was here a week ago.”}
The cutter for Brady left to go on on his own and make bags specifically for photographers. And that is why the first Billingham bags looked very much like the bags used by trout fishermen.
The other popular bags were the Domke bags. Jim Domke was a newspaper photographer who made his own bags, then bags for his envious friends and, finally, bags for a business. The Domke F-2 was pretty much the standard bag for the photographer who had to carry more than would fit in a trout bag or a wanted a bag that was compartmentalized.
But cameras have changed. Some very good cameras are very small and some very good cameras (DSLR’s) are very big. I still use a Billingham. It looks like the trout bag, except this one is much smaller. It carries a Canon G10, S90, cel phone, tape recorder, glasses and batteries, e.t.c.. Traveling light with a big DSLR, I still use a Domke. But it’s the smaller Domke F-8. It will hold a DSLR body and 3 or 4 lenses plus a lot of misc. stuff. It’s advantage - it doesn’t look like a camera bag.
But, face it, that DSLR with its autofocus lenses is one big camera compared to its early film counterparts. Multiple bodies, many lenses and a few accessories aren’t going to fit in what we think of as a “normal” bag. Even if I can cram everything into an F-2, it’s too heavy. Hanging on one shoulder, it makes sure I’m even more off balance than normal.
These days, I use backpacks to carry my DSLR rigs. Sounds silly, but I have almost as many backpacks as camera bags.
When I look around among my friends, i think we accumulate even more bags and packs than we do cameras, always looking for the perfect bag or the impossible dream. Any thoughts outside of “Bresson only carried one body with a normal lens, and he was great.”
(And almost everyone had to listen to the clerks say, “Mr. McCullin was here a week ago.”}
The cutter for Brady left to go on on his own and make bags specifically for photographers. And that is why the first Billingham bags looked very much like the bags used by trout fishermen.
The other popular bags were the Domke bags. Jim Domke was a newspaper photographer who made his own bags, then bags for his envious friends and, finally, bags for a business. The Domke F-2 was pretty much the standard bag for the photographer who had to carry more than would fit in a trout bag or a wanted a bag that was compartmentalized.
But cameras have changed. Some very good cameras are very small and some very good cameras (DSLR’s) are very big. I still use a Billingham. It looks like the trout bag, except this one is much smaller. It carries a Canon G10, S90, cel phone, tape recorder, glasses and batteries, e.t.c.. Traveling light with a big DSLR, I still use a Domke. But it’s the smaller Domke F-8. It will hold a DSLR body and 3 or 4 lenses plus a lot of misc. stuff. It’s advantage - it doesn’t look like a camera bag.
But, face it, that DSLR with its autofocus lenses is one big camera compared to its early film counterparts. Multiple bodies, many lenses and a few accessories aren’t going to fit in what we think of as a “normal” bag. Even if I can cram everything into an F-2, it’s too heavy. Hanging on one shoulder, it makes sure I’m even more off balance than normal.
These days, I use backpacks to carry my DSLR rigs. Sounds silly, but I have almost as many backpacks as camera bags.
When I look around among my friends, i think we accumulate even more bags and packs than we do cameras, always looking for the perfect bag or the impossible dream. Any thoughts outside of “Bresson only carried one body with a normal lens, and he was great.”
