One of the most critical pieces of gear I have is my sling bag. Now as I’m sure many of you out there have in the past done, gone around to different stores, tried different bags, read the reviews and none of them were quite right. I know that feeling all to well. A couple years ago a good of ours Kevin Dobler, one heck of a good photographer, recommended we look into MountainSmith. There company is actually geared towards backpacking, camping, and outdoor recreational use. Not exactly photography but they make some pretty damn strong bags. After seeing his, Dad and I went with a similar one, the DayTLS designed for lumbar support. A couple tricks with it though
As Dad and I both found out these bags are not only strong, they survived many of our trips to Alaska, they are even quite waterproof. I’m not going to drop mine into the lake anytime soon but seems to do alright in rain. One thing we instantly noticed was there was no compartments inside for lenses, just one big opening. Well these guys actually make a divider kit for just that, it’s called The Kit Cube. Three lens compartments. Now you might be saying that’s not a lot of space well speaking from experience I have managed to fit a 14-24, 24-70 and 70-200VRII lens in the bag, iPad, Flash, Flash cable, flash card wallet, business card wallet(very important), and a rain jacket in the bag at one time. It’s got space.
The last thing I want to mention about this product is the sling portion is nice but when you’re carrying a 200-400 around on a strap too, it gets uncomfortable, so we ended up getting Strapettes which actually make it into a backpack but a really comfortable light one. Best part is, it fits into the luggage pretty easily, not every trip is that easy though. So if you are out looking for another bag you might want to look into these ones.