JohnnyGeek

The primary problem with most camera backpacks is that they are either a good camera gear storage device, or a comfortable means of transport – but rarely both.

For most people, this isn’t a huge deal as most of the time, people don’t care much about the comfortable transportability aspect. Camera bags (of any style) are typically a way to keep all of one’s gear together in one protected place, and that’s it. It is taken off the closet shelf, the camera is used, and then it is put back on the closet shelf.

Oh sure, there is the occasional trip to the zoo, or a wedding or some family event, where it is taken from the closet to the trunk of the car, and then from the car to the bottom of the baby carriage or to grandma’s kitchen table – but when you consider that just about everyone has a digital camera these days, it is comparatively rare that one actually “travels” with it.

There are however those of us who require a truly portable, comfortable, useful means of transporting ridiculous amounts of gear to the zoo, to grandma’s house, and also to far reaches of very odd places. And so the quest began.

I had relatively defined requirements – it needed to be:

• Able to hold my relatively large-framed camera and several lenses ranging in size from the moderate to the ridiculously large.
• Able to hold various doo-dads, attachments, widgets and whatnot.
• Able to hold my laptop, if possible – this was more of a nice to have than a requirement (at the time) however it has grown into a must have since then.
• Be all of these utilitarian things, and also a comfortable backpack to haul around.

Being who I am (a bit of a brand whore, and one who is not happy unless I’m making Google my bitch and analyzing every aspect of a purchase with abundant research and comparisons) I made the usual rounds on Amazon and Epinions, and ended up with a LowePro CompuTrekker AW – excellent reviews and not terrible at $150 or so.

If room to spare is the objective, the CompuTrekker AW certainly fits the bill. There was ample space for my camera, lenses, various doo-dads, cables and thingies – with much room to spare actually.

The laptop area was big enough for my (at the time) 15″ MacBook Pro, but would not have held my current 17″, although there is a recently added CompuTrekker Plus that likely would.

In any case, storage capacity was never an issue with the CompuTrekker – the problems didn’t come into play until I actually tried to use it as anything other than a padded brick with a carry handle.

The internal storage was very well planned, however it was like carrying a very rigid, very uncomfortable box on your back. Poorly designed, thick, hard-foam straps and absolutely no contour or ergonomic design to “the pack” itself, make this design utterly useless for any kind of trekking beyond that of the trip from the closet to the car.

Unfortunately, this padded-brick-with-shoulder-straps design is by far the predominant style with camera backpacks today. LowePro, Tenba, Tamrac – they all seem to think that you can’t get large capacity without just creating a square box and stitching some straps to it.

Be that as it may, I tried some offerings from Tenba and Tamrac, and found the same end result to be true. Suck with a capital S – all the way around.

Enter Crumpler.

Ok – look…I just don’t see it. Crumpler seems to be all the rage with the yuppie photographer wannabes, and I just don’t get it. It’s a gunny sack that they stuck some padding in. Yes, it is a comfortable pack – NO – it is NOT a camera bag. My stuff was banging around all over, and they simply don’t offer anything big enough to be actually useful for anything other than the zoo trip. Sorry – it doesn’t even rate a picture, much less any kind words about its horribly failed attempt to be a camera bag.

Kata – Money doesn’t buy happiness..

Not one to simply accept that there is no better alternative, I dug deeper into “ergonomic camera backpacks”, and stumbled across the Kata brand – specifically the R-103 and R-104 Rucksack. A little pricey at roughly $200 for the R-103 and $275 for the R-104, the Katas offered ample space for the gear I’d most likely take with me, although I would certainly have to choose whether or not I’d be taking a 15″ or 17″ laptop, as the 17″ MacBook Pro would only fit in the 104 – and although I had both a 15″ and a 17″ at the time, I preferred the 17″.

Given the price point of these bags, I felt it necessary to find a place in town that had them so I could try them out before getting one and being disappointed.

I did, and I was – disappointed. They’re very… round. Like carrying a spare tire on your back kind of round.

I loaded the ones in the store up with a variety of whatever gear the guy behind the counter would let me shove in there, including a few boxes of photo paper to simulate a laptop. It immediately submarined – dropped right down to the small of my back and sat there like a big stupid spare tire.

I’d adjust it higher, and then it was quickly uncomfortable on the straps. I’d adjust it lower, and it became equally uncomfortable on my back. Again – a great photo bag…but a horrible traveling backpack.

Honestly, I was just about ready to give up. Perhaps I was asking too much – I mean we’re talking about a good deal of heavy equipment, with the expectation that I be able to haul it around comfortably as if it were a well-made hiking backpack. Surely all of these manufacturers are churning out what they’re churning out – because that’s just as good as it gets, right?

And then – quite by accident – I stumbled across a post in of all places, a snowboarding Internet forum. (Not that I snowboard – umm…go ahead and get that image out of your mind.)

Someone there was talking about a snowboarding pack they were using, made by a company I’d never heard of – Dakine – which had an option for something called a “camera block”.

I did a little investigation, and found that Dakine wasn’t in the business of making camera backpacks – they were in the business of making ergonomic packs for active lifestyles, and they happened to also have some that would carry a camera. Maybe we had a prayer here.

Enter nirvana..

Before I explain the many, many, many reasons why my Dakine Sequence ($150) is better than any other camera backpack you’ll ever find at any price – I feel it only fair to make it clear where everyone else is going wrong with their designs.

When you try to take a good camera bag – which is basically a padded box – and turn that bag into a backpack, what you end up with is a square padded box with backpack straps on it. By contrast, when you take a good backpack, and try to turn that bag into a good camera bag, you fail miserably because it’s not a rigid, structured padded box.

Which do you choose – altering a camera bag into a comfortable pack, or altering a comfortable pack into a camera bag? NEITHER!

Friggin’ genius…

So what’s the secret that it seems only Dakine has discovered that no one else has? Stop trying to make something be two things at once – let it be two things. Make a really good, supportive, padded box for camera gear – and then drop that separate piece inside a really good, comfortable, ergonomic pack.

Dakine has what they call a “camera block”, which is an option on several of their packs. It’s basically just a plain squarish box of absolutely no ergonomic significance, designed to do one thing – hold camera gear safely and securely. You can, if you choose to, just carry that around – it’s got a handle on the top and clips on the sides for a shoulder strap.

They then take an ergonomically perfect sports pack, designed for any activity from hiking to rock climbing to snow boarding to skateboarding to skiing and anything else you can think of…

And then, they put this separate camera block inside it.

What you end up with is quite frankly, nirvana. The camera block acts as it supposed to – securely holding all of your gear, mounted in a pack that acts as it is supposed to – being comfortable to wear during even the most challenging physical activity.

It seems simple enough, but in fact – no one else has done it – and let me tell you, it works. It is the ultimate combination of form and function. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Apple had something to do with it.

As if this weren’t enough, there are some very innovative design features in this pack that make it quite simply a find I never would have expected to come across.

Those paying attention might notice that the entry to the main compartment of this pack is gained from the back – through the straps, not the front. At first glance one might think that’s weird, and would be inconvenient, but how often are you able to pull something out of your front load pack while you’re wearing it anyways?

I’ll tell you from experience – the only thing worse than losing camera equipment to a pickpocket who was able to unzip your bag without your knowing it (at least in that case, you have a criminal to blame), is inadvertantly forgetting to zip your bag completely before you swing it up on your back, and hearing that fateful crunch of a $1500 lens hitting the ground. In those unfortunate cases, you have no one to blame but yourself.

This bag solves that – you have to close the flap to put it on, and once on – nothing can possibly come out – even with it unzipped. Your contents are literally pinned against you. The front zipper area is actually quite small and relatively useless for anything other than pens, train tickets and other very flat things.

Another great feature of the rear closure is that when you’re out in the weeds, or even wet city streets, you’re not laying your pack down on the back (which will then later touch your back) to deal with your gear – something I hated with the front-access packs I had. The straps and back panel were all nasty, and then I’d have to wear that thing. Eww.

The flap of the camera block slips into the flap of the pack itself, so opening the pack opens the camera block. The camera block takes up only about 80% of the inside space, leaving ample room around the block at the top and sides to squirrel away cables, light meters, Red Bulls, extra socks, and even a sweater.

The zippered top area of the pack is much roomier than it would appear, and can easily hold tickets, change, sammiches, Red Bulls, cell phone, wallet, iPod, headphones, and still more.

Another nifty feature I’ve found that Dakine certainly didn’t intend, is that even a 17″ MacBook Pro fits nicely on top of the block and still allows the flap to close without any problems. The padded back flap of the pack is so comfortable that the laptop inside isn’t felt at all while wearing it.

On the outside of the pack, are straps and webbing for all nature of things including a nifty loop that tucks into the bottom of the pack when not in use, that Dakine intended for those who ski or snowboard – but I find is perfect to hold even the most massive tripod.

From a wearability standpoint, I have quite literally walked for miles in the city streets of Paris, the Ardennes forest of Belgium, and many stops in between wearing this pack loaded with as much as 40lbs of gear, and been quite comfortable. It simply melts away.

The pack I’m wearing in the photos above contains:

• Canon 30d with extended grip
• Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L lens (huge)
• Canon 24-105mm f/4 IS L lens (huge)
• Canon 100mm f/2.8 L lens
• Canon 580EX flash
• Sony camcorder
• Sony compact point-and-shoot camera
• Firewire, USB, and remote flash cables
• Sekonic light meter
• 2 spare camera batteries and 8 spare flash batteries
• iPod, Blackberry, 2 Red Bulls, passport, wallet, money, keys, headphones
• 2 pairs socks, 2 pair undies, 2 t-shirts, and a fleece pullover
• Ridiculously large Manfrotto tripod
• 17″ MacBook Pro
• iGo travel power adapter pack with input tips for 110v, 220v, car and airline ports, and tips for camera, ipod, blackberry and MacBook Pro

(And I still have room left…)

The bottom line…

Up until I bought my $150 Dakine Sequence about 2 years ago, I had thus far spent roughly $500 on camera bags that turned out to be no better than the one before – not because of any glaring manufacturing flaw, but because they all shared the same basic design concept flaw – they tried to be too many things at the same time.

Dakine has taken the time to step back and realize that sometimes it’s best to let different things be different, and instead figure out a way to make them work together.

If you’re happy with the camera bag you have – by all means, hang on to it. If however you have experienced the same frustrations that I have when you try to use your camera pack as a pack, I highly recommend the Dakine Sequence. In fact, I will likely be picking up a second one before too long to put up in the closet, so that when I finally wear mine out (2 years and going strong though), I won’t have to worry about whether or not they’re still making it.

Bottom line – I’d gladly have paid the $500 I shelled out for all of the other ones combined, for this one. It’s worth it. Go get one.

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