Juan Valdenebro
Truth is beauty
Yes, another bags thread: I apologize...
I just wanted to share in detail what bags make me feel (and dream?), and hopefully read about others' unsatisfaction... Or, are you totally satisfied? Don't you think -every once in a while- you could find a functionally better bag? Don't you ever imagine even a nicer looking one?
During my first years using cameras, I just had a black Nikon shoulder bag, kind of square and big... On it -when full- I used to have my first system: electronic AF SLR with two zooms, three primes including macro (& bellows!) and a flash... I even used to go out with a big tripod ALWAYS! LOL!!!... Now I barely remember those “Beast of Burden” days... Today I really feel like saying “Oh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...”
That shoulder bag is fine for carrying gear, but -though I used it a lot- it's not so great for carrying gear while shooting... And that's what a good bag should do well: make your shooting easier...
Then I had more equipment, and for my MF I tried something different... My second bag was a very nice MF backpack designed for a Hassleblad with 50, 80 and 150 and lots of accessories... For that size and weight, backpacking for nature trips was a nice (and maybe the only) option... Again, great for moving gear, but slow for handling it, although with MF, tripod and landscapes, fast shooting was not necessary...
For LF, the third bag I got was big, but I never wanted a different one... That one worked well for what LF is...
Then when I went digital (ooops!) I looked for bags for a long time (a few years), but I was never able to find one that seemed to really work a lot better than my Nikon one, so I used the old one for digital too...
Then, when I got pretty tired of digital photography (battery life, computers, etc...) the sweet years began: I got my FE2 and 20, 50 and 105 manual lenses, and my photography did change a lot: I stopped feeling like a creator, and started to feel like a reflector... I didn't use tripod or flash anymore (except for work in my studio) and street shooting started for me, first in color & with an SLR... So that new wave I felt in, made me look for another bag: a small one this time... I wanted a bag that couldn't be seen as photographic: I didn't want to be detected, and also I didn't want to be robbed in dangerous places... I bought a photographic bag and I took it to a leather guy and he installed some old leather here and there as I told him, to make it look old and uninteresting in any way and avoid eyes and thieves... The bag is small and can just take my FE2 with a 50 1.4 on, and the 20 and 105 by its side, and a bit below camera when it has its lens aiming down... I enjoyed the bag for some time, and yet use it sometimes... Again, opening it, and changing lenses, wasn't as fast as I wanted...
After some years I started to use RFs... I bought two non-photographic bags for RF street shooting, and I used to carry one camera/lens and another lens in one of them, and two cameras/ three lenses in the other one, depending on the mood, light and place... For my belt, the leather guy made a small bag for a lonely camera/lens. I use them sometimes...
Yet I felt I wanted a bag... I designed a luxury leather, big, handmade shoulder bag (made by an expensive store), with space for three bodies, five lenses including a big 90, all filters, hoods, incident meter & film. That bag is very nice looking and it's great for storing and moving my RFs, and it's even OK for shooting, but I couldn't use it in the streets in South America (I live half the time in Colombia, where my twins live with their mother) so last year I thought, once again, “I need a bag”...
I bought a native hand-made shoulder bag (from Ecuador, brown and beige, with native figures: so very typical in the streets all around in South America) and took it to a woman (she makes clothes) who divided it in two internally and installed protective materials inside, as sooner or later I'll drop it... I use it A LOT. It's by far the one I use the most, both in Colombia and Spain... Generally, I have a RF/lens and another lens in one of its halves, and my FE2/50 & 105 inside the other half of it... The woman installed a zipper too, so it's closed all the time but I can open it instantly. I would say it is my best bag for shooting.
Then I started to shoot without bag... I use a “Coronel Tapiocca” vest I got in 2006 as a gift from an old photographer/friend in Barcelona: he had two new, identical ones he liked a lot, and after a bottle of wine, his wife suddenly told him in front of me: “explain why the hell do you need both of them: Juan should use one of them”... I didn't know what to say... He was taken by surprise, and then he smiled and said: “Let's open another bottle...” I walk with one body in one pocket and two small lenses in other pockets... Some film and my meter... Another camera/lens down in my hand/wrist... It's cool and fast... Shamefully I can't use it everywhere... Sometimes you just can't be “the photographer with camera and vest”... But when you can, it looks great and it's the best solution IMO...
That was all... Until yesterday... After all those recent bags threads, yesterday I thought “I need a bag”...
So after feeling “one day I'll have a lot more bags than cameras and that's stupid” I seriously decided to think of it trying to understand why I need another bag... These are the basic ideas or conclusions, trying to make it my last bag ever:
I need a bag for a precise kind of shooting: pleasure shooting... I don't need another one for fast street shooting, and I don't need another one for family/friends shooting, and I don't need another one for storing or transporting gear... I want a bag where I can place a few cameras with lenses on, all in row, to be taken and placed there easily. I want a comfortable carrying, crossed shoulder bag for B&W shooting only, especially for changing lenses as little as possible...
What cameras/lenses do I need to do all the things I like to do (no matter the light and scenes or subjects, and no matter the selective focus or huge DOF I want) if I go out to spend a weekend somewhere in the woods or any relaxing place? I need my 15 for fun: it'll be placed on my R4M with 400 film for soft light and f/8 shooting. For normal wide I'll use my Hexar AF (35) with 400 film pushed for all soft/low light situations including interiors, and my 28 3.5 at f/8 and yellow filter on my Leica IIIF with 100 film for direct sun at 1/200: this way I have two different and always ready sets for the very usual normal wide shooting, depending on the kind of light, without changing lenses... Another thing I like a lot is selective focus, so I'll have the J3 on my R3A with 400 film and ND8 for soft light, wide open shooting, ranging from open shade to low light... If I need the 15 for direct sun or the J3 for direct sun, I'll place them on the flat & light Bessa-T I'll have without lens in the center of my bag, waiting exclusively for direct sun with 100 film when an ultrawide under the sun is needed, or when selective focus with the J3 under the sun is what I want...
That makes a bag with five small zones (four covered foam, fix/sewn dividers) one next to the other: R4M/15 – IIIF/28 – T – HexarAF – R3A/J3. I'll pick and return tools easily... Yesterday I drew and finished designing... I bought materials today, and started cutting and sewing: I think I'll end it tomorrow... Materials did cost $5. Black jean and foam. Sometimes I think I'll ask a leather guy to cover it (after trying it to see how it works) and sometimes I think I'll just keep it black jean to use it for “silent” street shooting sometimes too... It's 35cm long, 14cm tall and 10cm deep: very small and compact for all it takes... It weighs around 100 grams only! With all cameras it'll be a bit heavy, but I can carry a few pounds for hours if the wide belt is crossed and has thick foam... I've really wanted FOR LONG to have those options together, and bags haven't allowed me before...
In general, bags are not designed for several bodies, and when I try to use a store bag for several bodies & lenses, those bags are too big and too notorious...
I wonder if other forum members have decided -for similar or different reasons- to make bags that can't be bought...
Cheers,
Juan
I just wanted to share in detail what bags make me feel (and dream?), and hopefully read about others' unsatisfaction... Or, are you totally satisfied? Don't you think -every once in a while- you could find a functionally better bag? Don't you ever imagine even a nicer looking one?
During my first years using cameras, I just had a black Nikon shoulder bag, kind of square and big... On it -when full- I used to have my first system: electronic AF SLR with two zooms, three primes including macro (& bellows!) and a flash... I even used to go out with a big tripod ALWAYS! LOL!!!... Now I barely remember those “Beast of Burden” days... Today I really feel like saying “Oh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...”
That shoulder bag is fine for carrying gear, but -though I used it a lot- it's not so great for carrying gear while shooting... And that's what a good bag should do well: make your shooting easier...
Then I had more equipment, and for my MF I tried something different... My second bag was a very nice MF backpack designed for a Hassleblad with 50, 80 and 150 and lots of accessories... For that size and weight, backpacking for nature trips was a nice (and maybe the only) option... Again, great for moving gear, but slow for handling it, although with MF, tripod and landscapes, fast shooting was not necessary...
For LF, the third bag I got was big, but I never wanted a different one... That one worked well for what LF is...
Then when I went digital (ooops!) I looked for bags for a long time (a few years), but I was never able to find one that seemed to really work a lot better than my Nikon one, so I used the old one for digital too...
Then, when I got pretty tired of digital photography (battery life, computers, etc...) the sweet years began: I got my FE2 and 20, 50 and 105 manual lenses, and my photography did change a lot: I stopped feeling like a creator, and started to feel like a reflector... I didn't use tripod or flash anymore (except for work in my studio) and street shooting started for me, first in color & with an SLR... So that new wave I felt in, made me look for another bag: a small one this time... I wanted a bag that couldn't be seen as photographic: I didn't want to be detected, and also I didn't want to be robbed in dangerous places... I bought a photographic bag and I took it to a leather guy and he installed some old leather here and there as I told him, to make it look old and uninteresting in any way and avoid eyes and thieves... The bag is small and can just take my FE2 with a 50 1.4 on, and the 20 and 105 by its side, and a bit below camera when it has its lens aiming down... I enjoyed the bag for some time, and yet use it sometimes... Again, opening it, and changing lenses, wasn't as fast as I wanted...
After some years I started to use RFs... I bought two non-photographic bags for RF street shooting, and I used to carry one camera/lens and another lens in one of them, and two cameras/ three lenses in the other one, depending on the mood, light and place... For my belt, the leather guy made a small bag for a lonely camera/lens. I use them sometimes...
Yet I felt I wanted a bag... I designed a luxury leather, big, handmade shoulder bag (made by an expensive store), with space for three bodies, five lenses including a big 90, all filters, hoods, incident meter & film. That bag is very nice looking and it's great for storing and moving my RFs, and it's even OK for shooting, but I couldn't use it in the streets in South America (I live half the time in Colombia, where my twins live with their mother) so last year I thought, once again, “I need a bag”...
I bought a native hand-made shoulder bag (from Ecuador, brown and beige, with native figures: so very typical in the streets all around in South America) and took it to a woman (she makes clothes) who divided it in two internally and installed protective materials inside, as sooner or later I'll drop it... I use it A LOT. It's by far the one I use the most, both in Colombia and Spain... Generally, I have a RF/lens and another lens in one of its halves, and my FE2/50 & 105 inside the other half of it... The woman installed a zipper too, so it's closed all the time but I can open it instantly. I would say it is my best bag for shooting.
Then I started to shoot without bag... I use a “Coronel Tapiocca” vest I got in 2006 as a gift from an old photographer/friend in Barcelona: he had two new, identical ones he liked a lot, and after a bottle of wine, his wife suddenly told him in front of me: “explain why the hell do you need both of them: Juan should use one of them”... I didn't know what to say... He was taken by surprise, and then he smiled and said: “Let's open another bottle...” I walk with one body in one pocket and two small lenses in other pockets... Some film and my meter... Another camera/lens down in my hand/wrist... It's cool and fast... Shamefully I can't use it everywhere... Sometimes you just can't be “the photographer with camera and vest”... But when you can, it looks great and it's the best solution IMO...
That was all... Until yesterday... After all those recent bags threads, yesterday I thought “I need a bag”...
So after feeling “one day I'll have a lot more bags than cameras and that's stupid” I seriously decided to think of it trying to understand why I need another bag... These are the basic ideas or conclusions, trying to make it my last bag ever:
I need a bag for a precise kind of shooting: pleasure shooting... I don't need another one for fast street shooting, and I don't need another one for family/friends shooting, and I don't need another one for storing or transporting gear... I want a bag where I can place a few cameras with lenses on, all in row, to be taken and placed there easily. I want a comfortable carrying, crossed shoulder bag for B&W shooting only, especially for changing lenses as little as possible...
What cameras/lenses do I need to do all the things I like to do (no matter the light and scenes or subjects, and no matter the selective focus or huge DOF I want) if I go out to spend a weekend somewhere in the woods or any relaxing place? I need my 15 for fun: it'll be placed on my R4M with 400 film for soft light and f/8 shooting. For normal wide I'll use my Hexar AF (35) with 400 film pushed for all soft/low light situations including interiors, and my 28 3.5 at f/8 and yellow filter on my Leica IIIF with 100 film for direct sun at 1/200: this way I have two different and always ready sets for the very usual normal wide shooting, depending on the kind of light, without changing lenses... Another thing I like a lot is selective focus, so I'll have the J3 on my R3A with 400 film and ND8 for soft light, wide open shooting, ranging from open shade to low light... If I need the 15 for direct sun or the J3 for direct sun, I'll place them on the flat & light Bessa-T I'll have without lens in the center of my bag, waiting exclusively for direct sun with 100 film when an ultrawide under the sun is needed, or when selective focus with the J3 under the sun is what I want...
That makes a bag with five small zones (four covered foam, fix/sewn dividers) one next to the other: R4M/15 – IIIF/28 – T – HexarAF – R3A/J3. I'll pick and return tools easily... Yesterday I drew and finished designing... I bought materials today, and started cutting and sewing: I think I'll end it tomorrow... Materials did cost $5. Black jean and foam. Sometimes I think I'll ask a leather guy to cover it (after trying it to see how it works) and sometimes I think I'll just keep it black jean to use it for “silent” street shooting sometimes too... It's 35cm long, 14cm tall and 10cm deep: very small and compact for all it takes... It weighs around 100 grams only! With all cameras it'll be a bit heavy, but I can carry a few pounds for hours if the wide belt is crossed and has thick foam... I've really wanted FOR LONG to have those options together, and bags haven't allowed me before...
In general, bags are not designed for several bodies, and when I try to use a store bag for several bodies & lenses, those bags are too big and too notorious...
I wonder if other forum members have decided -for similar or different reasons- to make bags that can't be bought...
Cheers,
Juan
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