The Bags
April 14th, 2014
With the new system I, of course, needed a new bag to carry it around. The new stuff is small enough to fit easily into my old bags along with the Nikon stuff, but the point of all this was to come up with something easy to carry around so I could leave the Nikon stuff at home. Initially I picked up a small bag from a local camera shop, but it turned out to be so poorly designed that it really wouldn’t work as a shooting bag. It’s ok for storage and transportation, but I needed something better to work out of.
I’d surprisingly never owned a Domke bag until now. But a search of what might work kept bringing me back to the Domke F-5XA pictured above. I’m very fond of this bag and think it is just about perfect to use with this system. (No, I’m not getting paid to say this.) It will carry the G5 with the kit lens and the 45-200 along with the body cap lens. I can fit the charger and some spare cards in with no problem. The shoulder strap has that magic Domke stuff on it that keeps it from slipping off your shoulder. And this kit weighs so little that I don’t even notice the weight, even after having it on my shoulder all day.
I can zip the bag up and toss it in a carry-on suitcase or a backpack. It’s secure and well protected. Or I can leave the zipper open and easily swap out lenses while I’m shooting, using the flap to keep everything secure in the bag. A very nice design.
That would have been my bag…but then I went and added that 50mm Nikkor lens to the kit. I don’t always want to take it along, but sometimes I do. And it just won’t fit in the small bag along with all the other stuff. So I went back to shopping and decided on the larger version of the Domke I already had, the Domke F-5XB. It’s just enough larger to take the extra lens (and will work well with a wide-angle zoom if I end up buying one in the future. Another bonus for travel with the larger bag is that my Kindle Fire and its charger will also fit in it along with all the photo gear.
Another thing I like about these bags, though I haven’t tried it yet, is that they have a belt loop. I will probably put a belt through the loop sometime in the future and see how I like carrying it that way, instead of using the shoulder strap. I’ll use a dedicated belt instead of putting it on the belt in my pants. That will also give me the option of adding another pouch the belt…or even carrying both of these bags on the belt at the same time if I ever feel the need to drag around more gear. The Nikon D7000 could also fit in one of these bags with my 18-200 on it and make a compact way to drag around both cameras.
So, this is the end of my blog posts about all this camera gear. I’ll get back to posting my photos soon. I’m very happy with my new accidental system and interested to see where Micro 4/3 goes in the future. I’m sure I’ll wait at least two generations before I buy another camera body…and then I’ll wait until it is in close-out mode because the next generation is coming. Maybe I’ll buy one of the higher-end bodies if they knock the price way down. But meanwhile I’m going to just enjoy shooting with this system and not having my back and shoulder ache from hauling my gear around. The Nikon still comes out for serious work, but I can do just fine shooting with the Micro 4/3 stuff when I travel or just want to wander around doing photos.
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