John Camp
Well-known
Frank's acquisition of a new Domke is making me twitchy; cameras and lenses don't give me GAS, but bags may eventually break me. We have a small attic room in my house that my kids, before they grew up and moved out, called "the bag room." Most of the bags are camera bags. My heaviest duty photography in the past ten years involved an archaeological dig in Israel (www.rehov.org); I once took a Domke bag full of Nikon equipment with me from the states to Israel for a second photographer. When he showed up on the tel after one weekend, the Nikons were stuffed in an over padded cheap nylon bag. He didn't like the Domke and had ***thrown it away.***
Anyway, reading of Frank's walk around town reminded me that I need to get on a long-planned project of building my own camera bag. This will be for an R-D1 and (so far) three lenses: a Tri-Elmar, a 50 Summilux and a 75 Summilux. I am going to make it out of a Tumi backpack designed for carrying a laptop and business stuff. The main compartment of the bag is open from bottom to top, and is divided about two-thirds/one-third into vertical compartments. The one-third used to hold a specially padded envelope just big enough to hold a Mac Powerbook. I am going to reserve that for notebooks, file folders, and all the other crap I carry around. The main compartment will be lightly padded with strips of padding that I bought as an accessory to my Kata bags. It's thin and tough. I'm thinking about holding it in place with double-sided carpet tape. Because the pack was made to carry a laptop, the back and bottom are already well-padded. The back-straps are bias-cut, and so can hang off either shoulder or be worn on both. The bag is black heavy-duty nylon with no identifying labels. I'm thinking of putting an old sticker of some kind on it, to make it look a little shabby and beat-up. Fits well on overheads on even small commuter planes. This could be the perfect bag; but that's what I thought about all the others, too.
Actually, I've got so many bags, that if I didn't think the people on this forum, who seem to be almost sexually engaged with e-bay, wouldn't sell them fifteen minutes later, I'd be tempted to have a bag give-away. Something's gotta be done.
JC
Anyway, reading of Frank's walk around town reminded me that I need to get on a long-planned project of building my own camera bag. This will be for an R-D1 and (so far) three lenses: a Tri-Elmar, a 50 Summilux and a 75 Summilux. I am going to make it out of a Tumi backpack designed for carrying a laptop and business stuff. The main compartment of the bag is open from bottom to top, and is divided about two-thirds/one-third into vertical compartments. The one-third used to hold a specially padded envelope just big enough to hold a Mac Powerbook. I am going to reserve that for notebooks, file folders, and all the other crap I carry around. The main compartment will be lightly padded with strips of padding that I bought as an accessory to my Kata bags. It's thin and tough. I'm thinking about holding it in place with double-sided carpet tape. Because the pack was made to carry a laptop, the back and bottom are already well-padded. The back-straps are bias-cut, and so can hang off either shoulder or be worn on both. The bag is black heavy-duty nylon with no identifying labels. I'm thinking of putting an old sticker of some kind on it, to make it look a little shabby and beat-up. Fits well on overheads on even small commuter planes. This could be the perfect bag; but that's what I thought about all the others, too.
Actually, I've got so many bags, that if I didn't think the people on this forum, who seem to be almost sexually engaged with e-bay, wouldn't sell them fifteen minutes later, I'd be tempted to have a bag give-away. Something's gotta be done.
JC
