Camera bags

I love camera bags. 

I am what you may call, a bit of a camera bag junkie!

I have six camera bags and an aluminium wheeled case.

In no particular order of preference, they are  .  .  .

Billingham 550

The oldest. 

I purchased it in 1988. It's a massive Billingham 550 and cost me £108 which, at the time was a LOT of money but I was prepared to pay this because lots of other photographers were using them as they are hard wearing.  The latest price on their website is now £500! You can read about it here. You can also read my review of it on that page.

The Billingham 550. 
Can accommodate one toddler or lots of camera gear

 

 

 

 

As I mentioned at the beginning, this bag is massive and oozes quality. With hand stitching, brass fittings and waterproof materials used in its construction, it's also quite heavy even when empty! It can comfortably seat an eighteen month old toddler and an SLR! I normally put loads of stuff in it or use it as an airline cabin bag.

Weighing in at 2.6 Kilograms empty, it's the bag that I put in my car and just take stuff out of it as I need it. At the moment it holds an EOS 6d, an EOS 7d plus grip, a 16 - 35 zoom, a 24 - 105 zoom, two Canon Speedlite 420 EX's plus cleaning cloths, batteries, memory cards and miscellaneous other items. The total weight of all these items together with the bag is 11 kilograms. Wash it occasionally with warm soapy water and treat it afterwards with a weatherproofing spray and it'll last for decades.


Billingham System 3

A smaller Billingham bag is also in my collection and I tend to use it for my GoPro Fusion or my Drone stuff. It's also an "oldie" and I paid about £20 for it second hand back in the early nineties (probably around 1994). I searched online for it to find out the model number but eventually resorted to contacting Billingham directly where the helpful Mel told me this: 

 

"The model of bag was a System. There were 3 versions of it System 2, System 3 or System 4. It definitely isn't a System 2, speaking to some of the longer working members of staff we think its a System 3 which was a predecessor to the 335".

I use it now for my GoPro Fusion 360 degree camera and an action camera together with all their accessories.

Hama Katoomba 190 RL

A more recent addition to my collection. The Hama Katoomba190RL. I bought it in 2012 to reduce the stress on my back and shoulders from years of using a normal camera bag. Old habits however die hard and I still find myself picking up and using one of my other "over the shoulder" bags. I wrote about it here and here. 

On my way to a photoshoot with the 

Katoomba and lighting stands

Really well designed and packs a lot in 

It also has a built in rainproof cover.

Tamrac 5606 System 6

Found in a charity shop. In my youth I always wanted a Tamrac but they were out of my price range. I use mine for my Fujifilm cameras. Mine holds a flash, an X-H1 with grip, an X-E2s, an 18-55 zoom, a 10-18 zoom, a 55 - 200 zoom, a 23mm and a 35mm plus batteries and memorycards This one has storage for rolls of film (which shows its age) and cost me twenty Swiss francs ($20 or £17).

 

My Tamrac provides lots of space and is great quality

 

Jessops noname 

Bought in London in the eighties. This bag has been a constant companion and has travelled the World with me. The colour has faded considerably but it is still lightweight and very comfortable to sling over my shoulder.

 

No name Jessop's own brand bag

 

Luckily the cat left before my job.

Mekko Report Series Professional Photo Bag

An impulse buy from an auction site. Not yet used and still in the cardboard box in which it arrived. Made in Taiwan from 100% natural cotton canvas with waterproof coating and lots of compartments and stainless steel hardware (zips, buckles etc.). It is a clone/copy of a similar Domke model but a lot less expensive. More details here. There is a great in-depth review of it on this site.

No Name former Makeup case

The last and most recent item in my collection is another charity shop find. 

It is a three section aluminium wheeled case. I paid the princely sum of twenty Swiss francs ($20 or £17) for it. There is no  maker's name visible and it has lots of bumps and scratches which bear testament to its ruggedness. A set of keys were included in the price. There is also a collapsible handle which makes it easy to handle and steer when wheeling it around.

  

 

According to a sticker which was attached to the case when I bought it, the former owner was a make up artist so I thoroughly cleaned it when I got it back home because I didn't want any left over residue (powders etc) getting inside my gear.

The case opened up.

As mentioned, it is in three separate compartments. I use the top compartment to hold lighting gear. There are three Speedlites, a Phottix Odin flash trigger set and various Lambency Universal light diffusors and filters.

The middle part holds two DSLR's and four lenses together with a small Tupperware container with spare batteries and memory cards in it and a bag with cleaning cloths.

The bottom section has all manner of accessories including screwdrivers, hotshoe spirit levels (invaluable), filters and batteries etc

This case is slowly getting more and more use from me especially on a big shoot.

So that's it. I have a collection of bags which have served and continue to serve me well.

Sometimes however, I just can be bothered to schlep a bag around with me and if I know that I won't be needing lots of equipment, I'll but take the bare minimum, like this when I recently did an interior shoot near Zürich!

EOS 6d, tripod and 16-35 zoom lens

Thanks for reading. Do you also have more than one camera bag? Let me know in the comments.

Tom

Simple fill-in flash techniques

Flash. You either hate it or love it. Some people steadfastly refuse to use it, thinking that it will bleach everything in the picture out. Today's modern cameras can be set to record an images in seemingly very dark situations and still give good quality that would have been unthinkable a few years back. 

However, used correctly, fill in flash can greatly enhance a photo. I have prepared some notes on how to use fill in flash correctly using a wide variety of camera and flash types.

Image A                                             Image B

The two pictures above show how I used fill in flash on a Vivitar 283 flash to lighten the shadows whilst photographing Marianne. The 283 is a semi automatic flash meaning that the user has to first set the correct aperture on the camera and the flash manually. I knew that the correct exposure for the overall outdoor scene was 1/200 sec at f11. I simply set these manually on the camera and used the 283 flash at f8. This meant that the flash gave out light which was one f-stop less than the ambient light. I did it this way because I didn't want the subject to be over lit. In the second example, Marianne's face is well exposed and not too bright. The flash has also added a pleasing catch-light to her eyes.

Fill in flash with a dedicated unit.

Image 1

  Image 2

Image 3

Image 1

Take a look at these three examples. In the first one, I exposed for my wife Oksana's face. This was taken at 1/125 sec @ f8. The background (gardens at Gruyère castle) is horribly overexposed. This is an occasion when I wanted the background to be illuminated to the same amount as the foreground.


Image 2
I took another image with the camera set to 1/200sec @ f18. This corresponded to the outside conditions. However, this time we have the opposite effect with Oksana's face nearly hidden.


Image 3
The solution, using a Canon 420 EZII Speedlite is wonderfully simple. Keeping the camera set for the last image i.e. 1/200sec @ f18 (for the outside ambient light), switch the flash on and fire away.

Feel free to leave some comments and thanks for reading. 

Kristina part 2. Another impromptu photoshoot.

I wrote back in June about an impromptu photo session with my sister in law Kristina.

She visited again last week and I managed to persuade her to pose for me again. This time she was less self concious, especially after seeing the finished results from our last time together and this new attitude came across in the photos we made.

As before, I only used my Canon 5dMKII set at ISO 400 and coupled with a 50mm f1.4 lens.  My Speedlite was always bounced from the ceiling and a silver reflector was used to direct light back into her face when her back was facing the (window) light.

The complete set can be found on my website here.

Thanks for reading.

Kristina. Impromptu photoshoot

My wife's sister came to visit us over the weekend.

At my suggestion we arranged an impromptu photoshoot. Using only one lens (a 50mm f1.4), a silver crumpled reflector and a Canon Speedlite on my 5d MkII which I always bounced.

We went through a couple of changes of outfits and 167 images.

I started off with a few head and shoulder shots just to relax her (she's a bit self conscious) and always let her see the results every few minutes.

Two hours later we had a great selection of images.

What do you think?

There is a more complete selection on my website here.