I’m not sure when it began. I received my first camera bag when I was a teenager 38 years ago. It was a suede hard-sided bag given to me by my girlfriend for my 17th birthday (We’ve now been married for 35 years). Back then we called them “gadget bags”, because you rarely carried your camera in it – it was too full of all your other stuff.
For about 15 years that was my only camera bag. In the 80s, when soft-sided bags were becoming popular, I bought a new nylon bag – a bit lighter, a bit larger – and that one was pretty much the only bag I used until about 12 years ago
The nylon bag developed a hole in it, so I bought a very sturdy Domke F2 canvas camera bag. Domke was founded in the late 70s by Jim Domke, himself a photographer, and he designed and made a bag for his own use out of canvas because he liked the way canvas bags would sort of shrink when not full, and he found them to be much more comfortable than hard-sided bags. Before long his bags were all the rage among press photographers, and he was cranking them out in a factory. He sold the business a few years ago, but they’re still being made of heavy canvas, and they last forever.
That Domke is the bag that I carry to work every day, but as a vacation bag it isn’t perfect, and for the last six years or so I’ve been obsessed with finding the perfect bag for our annual pilgrimage to The Rodent.
Actually, that isn’t quite truthful. The Domke really is the perfect bag, It’s waterproof, protects my equipment well, doesn’t look like a “steal me” camera bag, and it’s not bulky when partially full, but holds a ton of stuff when necessary.
The problem is that I’ve developed a, let’s say, fascination with camera bags, and whenever someone comes out with a new design, I’m like a moth to a flame.
So every year for the past five or so I’ve spent the three or four months before our vacation in anguish over which bag to take. I go back and forth and back and forth and in the end I always take the Domke. It makes my wife nuts.
A few months ago I was in a camera store in the mall and saw a really good-looking tan nylon and leather camera bag, not as big as the Domke, but big enough and well made, and since it had been marked down several times and was on clearance, it was only $15 dollars! A bargain! The perfect vacation bag!
So I bought it, and after three days I started experiencing the old conflict. The new bag is really nice, but it would just barely hold my stuff. What if I want to carry a bottle of water? Or a magazine? (No problem for the Domke – it has plenty of pockets.) Where will I keep all our documents? (The Domke has a security pocket.) The new bag really looks like a camera bag. Will someone try to snatch it off my shoulder?
Here we go again.
(See ‘What to look for in a camera bag‘)
