What to look for in a camera bag

First of all, when I say camera bag, I mean a bag, not a backpack. I don’t like backpacks because the person who’s wearing them can’t get to anything unless he or she takes it off, which is not very practical in a crowded place. I see photographers wearing them everywhere, but unless you’re rock-climbing, I don’t see how they would work well on vacation. I know that they are supposed to be more comfortable than a shoulder bag, but so is staying home.

A curved shoulder pad does a better job of distributing the bag's weight.

So let’s talk about the shoulder strap first. The best straps have either a curved or a wedge-shaped shoulder pad. That’s because when you’re wearing a bag, the strap falls at an angle, forcing one edge of the pad to press harder on your shoulder than the other. The curved or wedged pads conform to your shoulder, distributing the weight of the bag. The shoulder pad should also have a non-slip surface so you’re not constantly pulling the blasted thing up.

95% of the bags that you see in the stores are made of nylon, and that’s generally fine. Nylon is strong, lightweight, and fairly weatherproof (this is not the same as waterproof, most bags are NOT dunkable). You can improve or renew the water-resistance of a bag by spraying it with the waterproofing spray that they sell in shoe stores.

Five simple things you can do to shoot better video (especially at Walt Disney World)

5: Don’t be an upstanding photographer.
Upstanding is the practice of shooting everything at eye level while standing directly in front of it. Many times this is unavoidable, as there are crowds, and you happen to be where you happen to be, but often when you’re just grabbing some footage of a landscape, building, or the Dapper Dans, you can make the shot more interesting by shooting from an unusual angle or point-of-view. (Disney street performers love this and will often play to your camera.)

4: Play with your zoom rocker switch as much as you want, but NOT WHILE THE CAMERA IS RUNNING.
A zoom lens is an excellent tool for improving the composition of your shot before you press the start button, and, used thoughtfully, it can add movement to an otherwise static shot, but in general, keep your finger off the rocker unless you hate your audience.

My name is Mike, and I’m a camera bag-aholic

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.