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Trips

The quest to find a new camera bag for long hikes – part 2

This is a follow up on my previous post from 2016, after having made more experience and more thoughts about this topic.

Here is just a not so short recap on this topic:

I’ve always been struggling with a good solution to pack away camera equipment during long hiking trips which might take several days. On the one hand it’s practical if you use one of the present ICU systems by f-stop or Mindshift backpacks , however it has the disadvantage that those backpack internal camera bags are note very flexible when it comes to only carrying them for a couple of meters. Let me give you an example:
On a multi-day hike camp is set up in the afternoon, the tent is pitched and all camping related stuff resides in the tent or next to it, while the camera gear needs to be available for sunset or night shooting which might happen 1-2km away from the camping spot. Surely you can empty your backpack completely and only carry the camera gear in it for strolling around next to the camping area, however it comes with additional effort of re-packing which can be quite annoying on a week-long hiking trip. ICUs from f-stop at least can be detached from the backpack and carried with both hands or with a simple shoulder bag. This already gives a lot of flexibility for different packing styles and workflows, but it’s not there yet. I’d like to have the flexibility to carry an ICU either in the backpack or outside of the backpack, for example in front of me, like a slingshot shoulder bag or a bumbag. This gives you the freedom to have quick access to your camera gear during the hike and might enable you to get photos you otherwise wouldn’t have taken because of the hassle to get the camera gear out of your big backpack.

 

Back to today:

I’ve been on several long hiking trips since 2016, like on Yakushima in Japan and Tasmania in 2017, several multi-day hiking trips in the Alps and my recent 8-day hike trough the Drakensberg area in South Africa.
I’m still using the solution mentioned in my previous post, having a big Deuter 70L backpack and cheap shoulder bag which I can either carry in front of me by hanging it on the backpack carry system over both shoulders

What I noticed on each hike is the strap of the shoulder bag compromises the carry system of the backpack by putting weight on the load balancing straps next to the shoulders and hence prevents the carry system from putting more weight on the hip belt, which might be convenient at times when you want to carry the backpack away from your back. This is not catastrophic, but not good either, especially on very long hikes.
That’s why I recently looked into other solutions which allow you to carry a camera bag on your waist like bumbags. I want to try out the bags listed below and will update the post once I have new insights or decided to change mit kit by choosing one of those bags.

Waistbags / Bumbags:

  • Manfrotto Street CSC camera Sling/Waist pack
    • Exterior dimensions (L x W x H): 32 x 12 x 23 cm
    • Interior dimensions (L x W x H):  30 x 11 x 20 cm
    • Weight: 0.58kg
    • Thoughts: TBD
  • Crumpler JP5500-001 Jackpack 5500
    • Exterior dimensions (L x W x H): 35 x 21 x 15 cm
    • Interior dimensions (L x W x H): 32 x 20 x 12.5 cm
    • Weight: 0,8kg
    • Thoughts: TBD
  • Mantona ElementsPro 20
    • Exterior dimensions (L x W x H): 19 x 24 x 17 cm
    • Interior dimensions (L x W x H): 17 x 22 x 15 cm
    • Weight: 0,72 kg
    • Thoughts: TBD
  • CAMSLINGER Outdoor
    • Exterior dimensions (L x W x H): 22 x 17.5 x 11 cm
    • Interior dimensions (L x W x H): 19 x 16 x 9 cm
    • Weight: 0,48 kg
    • Thoughts: TBD

Trip to Saxon Switzerland

At the beginning of may I went to Saxon Switzerland with my buddies Alex and Jan with the hope to get some impressions of spring back home. Besides driving to some locations with the car we went on a 3 day hike in the park. We got really lucky with the weather, on the first two mornings we had beautiful layers of fog covering the lower areas of the park and during the day we had warm and sunny weather, perfect for hiking.

I’m already sure to go back there in autumn to get some shots with a different palette of colours.

Here are the first shots I’ll add to the gallery:

Salzburg Panoramas

Well I already mentioned I’ve been to Salzburg last April, so now it’s time to show some pictures. To be honest I’ve not processed all shots yet, but I can already present two panoramas which are worth showing.

Long over-due update

It had been a long time since my last update. Unfortunately I’m really neglecting my blog in favour of social media networks which I almost use on a daily basis, but I want to change that, otherwise the idea of this blog doesn’t make sense anyhow, does it?
I even thought of uploading not only “portfolio” photos here in my blog, but also documentation style shots for the purpose of a brief trip reports.

So what happened in the last couple of months, well I’ve been on some trips which all contributed portfolio related shots I want to show in the next days and weeks here on my blog:

  • April: Short trip to Salzburg, Austria
  • July: hike to Butzensee, Austria with 3 fellow photographers
  • August: Trip to Japan
  • September: Trip to Iceland

I already updated the galleries with the following shots from a short trip with fellow photographers last winter. They’ve been all taken all in German alps region.

Back from Japan

Wow, long time no post again… Apologies for being so inactive (and lazy) in the meantime :/

Just in case you wondered where I’ve been lately: I’ve been to Japan for two weeks and of course I brought some new material from there. I’ve been to Tokyo, Nikkou and Fujiyoshida / Lake Kawaguchi. The main photographic subject for this trip was modern architecture, rather than nature / landscapes, so I spend a good amount of time in Tokyo, where I also met with Luca Cesari. I guess my main subject in photography slightly changed, it was nature /landscapes in the early days and became modern architecture and travel photography these days. If you ask yourself why I mentioned travel photography without having much of it in my portfolio, you’re right. Although I have plenty of material, I’m very picky about selecting pictures for publication, because it’s somewhat a new field and really difficult for me to judge whether an image is suitable / good enough for publication.
Btw.: I still owe you pictures from Thailand, right?
I really would need holidays to catch up editing all the images I want to publish. I guess, I will reduce the editing effort to be able to publish more frequently. What do you think?

Anyways, it’s already a lot of text, when I started to write this post I didn’t intend to write much… Let the pictures speak! I’ll start publishing new pictures soon, stay tuned 😉