The Unsung Hero Accessories

I have a lot of equipment..... OK, that's a bit of an understatement, but everything is relative you know! Since I switched from film, I've cut down. I really have! It's gone from 2 bodies-plus motor drives (and sometimes with a digital camera along as well), 10-12 lenses, flash, filters and of course, film. At the moment, I'm down to one body (no need for seperate color and B&W film bodies), 1 to 4 lenses, and 1 or 2 flashes. It's awesome!

However, there's still the issue of hauling it around, and the whole bag/case issue is an easily overlooked piece of equipment. Well; I don't really mean "overlooked", but more like, not well thought out. The vast majority of amateur photographers typically just go over to the accessories aisle of Wal-Mart or Best Buy and pick up the (relatively) inexpensive shoulder bag that the manufacturer sells as the "Kit" for their camera. This "Kit" usually consist of a small shoulder bag that has a few small compartments and one large one, a filter, a cleaning pen, and a small tripod that probably won't be useful for even the smallest DSLR. On top of that, these "Kits" cost somewhere in the $80-100 range! So lets look at what you get for the money.

Let's start with what's inside. No, let's look at what's outside first! So, what's the big deal, it's a pretty generic black camera bag with a nice manufacturer's logo on it? Actually; no, not so much...that's not a logo, that's a neon sign advertising the contents and it has the added benefit of being an invitation to be stolen. One sure side-effect of carrying a "shoulder" style bag is that you'll regularly take it off of your shoulder and set it down since the are always slipping off of there anyway! The next issue is that the majority of them are not big enough for a serious photographer who is adding equipment and needs to carry it, but never fear, the manufacturer will have much bigger versions of the same bag that cost 2 to 3 times as much (with the their logo emblazoned on it as well). As for what's it come's with, you can buy better quality versions of those items (the ones that you really need or would use) for less so let's just move on.

OK, so what's a better course of action on bag's/cases then? Well...... that's a little complex, so bear with me on this. There's really 2 distinctly different sets of requirements (of which only one apply to you). The first is "Field Use" bag, basically meaning the bag that just carries what you need when you are out and about taking pictures; could be a day out with the family, vacation destination, kids' activity/ball games, etc. In this case, the bag needs to have just enough size and compartments (DO NOT count ones that are under each other) to carry only the stuff you need while shooting pictures! I'm a big proponent of sling-style bags for this....why? First of all, they stay on the back and out of the way when not needed, but easily slides around to the front when necessary. I use a Tamrac Velocity 8x. There are of course, a range of sizes, so you just need to find what'll fit you and your equipment. Mine carries my D200 (with or w/o grip) with the 18-200mm lens mounted, any combination of 2 medium sized lenses or flashes and the various other necessities such as extra batteries, memory cards, lens pen, etc. It also has a hide-away waist belt if you need more security on the move and Tamrac's S.A.S./M.A.S. mounting points in case you need to attach other stuff to the outside. It's easy to carry, doesn't hold enough to get overly heavy as well as small enough on the back where I'm not knocking over stuff when I turn around!

The other bag/case requirement is "Transport". I arrived at this issue when I started looking at the issues posed by my needs for our Alaska trip this summer. I'm sure, most everyone is aware of the increasing restrictions imposed by the airlines and TSA on size and weight for carry-on luggage. So, unless you're a woman, and can get away with a "purse" along with a "carry-on", then you are pretty much down to one item. And with the needs of the modern world of a notebook computer, along with the needs of a digital photographer's equipment, you have 2 (or more) sets of equipment which NEEDS (really, I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone why you don't want to hand either your laptop or camera over to "checked" luggage) be hand carried. So....what to do..... 2 equipment sets....one bag. If you want to try and cram your DSLR and lenses into a computer bag or your laptop into a camera bag....well... good luck with that!

Your other option is to look for a bag designed to hold both. Yes Virginia, they make those. Furthermore, I had other requirements. One, it needed to be a backpack style bag, if you've tried to get through big crowded airports with something big and heavy (remember-camera-lenses-flash-laptop-in one bag) from one shoulder, again; good luck with that. Secondly, it needed a compartment to store other "can't risk lost through airline luggage" items such as important meds, contacts/glasses, extra underwear (you never know), book, iPod, whatever. If you've ever had a piece of luggage even temporarily "lost", you understand this need. And for those who have had luggage lost and didn't have those important items with you..... You were an idiot and now you know why I have this requirement. Also, after arriving at my destination and I unload that stuff and have a long "day-trip", then that compartment carries things like snacks and that extra windbreaker, cap or whatever. For this, I did a ton of research and it was resolved by old "standbye", Tamrac, although most of the big outfits (Lowe, Kata) have something that does something similar. I bought the Tamrac Adventure 9 which is the right size for me (see pics).

No, I'm not stuck on Tamrac, I did the research (online) and found what was in my budget and fit my needs, then added those factors to my long-standing experience with Tamrac going back to shuoulder bags that held my film SLR rigs. To added onto this, I've NEVER bought a Tamrac bag new, they've come from eBay (of course), photo swap meet, and Amazon (bet some of you didn't know you can get used stuff there). None of them cost me more than $50! I am the Frugal Propellerhead after all. The other thing; the vast majority of thieves out there have no idea what Tamrac (or Lowe, or Kata) is, so they really aren't sure that they are going to score a nice DSLR or a bunch of diapers, lotions and candy bars!

It's not cool like a "new" flash, and won't make your BP go up like openning up the box to pull out a camera, lens or laptop, but the right bag will ABSOLUTELY repay your investment (both monetary and time) for years to comes.

Consolidation of Stuff

For the last week or so, I've been in the process of consolidating stuff. Which is the not so glamorous task of taking all the various parts and cast-offs and making use of them. This part of being a Propellerhead is not only less than fun, but often down-right laborious. Unfortunately it's something that has to be done and can be financially rewarding as well.

The crux of the matter is that, if you dabble in technology and upgrade on a regular basis, there's aways going to be leftovers. Much like the edible variety that clutters up your refrigerator, it's generally not anyone's first choice for dinner, but it's there, it's free and you'll feel much better about yourself if you go ahead and eat it instead of throwing it out. And as a result of my upgrading this last spring and most of the summer, there's quite a collection of various items that needed to be gotten rid of.

They run the gamut from various camera gear to computer parts, and even a DVD/Home Networking deadend that I got involved with a couple of years ago. Actually it all started when we decided to buy a new car to replace our 10 year old Honda Civic, so that had to be sold off first. That got the ball rolling and I've been at it ever since. Luckily the car sold relatively quickly and we were off and running. This is were eBay and/or Craig's List make their appearance. A few years ago, when we decided to move home from Chicago, I decided that it was time to get rid of some of my stuff that was on the edge of or fallen over the edge of obsolescence. There was the collection of 200+ Laserdiscs and about the same number of Betas as well as the decks to play them. DVD was really being to take hold, but there were still a number of die-hards that hung onto the perceived technical superiority of the uncompressed laserdisc video. So I took the more interesting of my collection and put them on eBay, then found a local place that gave me $5 a-pop for the rest (about 150) which as a great price. Pretty much everything else got sold on eBay as well. I just turn it into a virtual garage sale, which I took advantage of again when we moved to Dallas from Lubbock.

At any rate, I finally got off my hunkas and sold my flashes that had been rendered obsolete, by upgrade, the last of the D70 accessories and some tripod parts that I'd picked up for free since it was broken. This is something that I learned years ago (and it never fails to amaze my wife who just shakes her head); is that I will typically sell items on eBay for more than I originally paid for it. This is mostly due to the fact that I believe strongly (supported by experience) that anything on eBay will eventually reappear and if a buyer is persistent and patient enough, can be had for lower than the typical selling price. You just have to be disciplined enough to let the item go when it gets over what you know to be the price for a "good or great deal". I even sold off my technological dead end, a D-Link "networked" DVD Player that allows you to connect it to one or more computers across a home network. Sounds really cool....pain in the neck to use though. So I took about a $20 bath on it after a couple of years and sold it the other day.

Then it was on to the other accummulated stuff. Amoung the piles of laptop parts were 2 ThinkPads that needed to be put to use. One was an old machine that my brother had used as a electronic media computer in his A/V system which he sent me when he upgraded, and the other was my sister-in-law's old laptop that died and I replaced (with my wife's old machine) last year. The A/V machine required me to do some reconfiguring my cabinet so it would have a slide-out shelf to sit on. The other one though has sucked up most of my attention span over the last 2 days since it was one of those things where it was exhibiting an "intermittent" problem....meaning, sometimes it boots, but most of the time it doesn't. After seeking my brother's thought on it last night, I took his recommendation to pull the CPU and reapply the paste between it and the cooling fan. Made sense to me since that machine is almost 10 years old and has gone through 2 hard drives. However, it was a no go. Now, back to the drawing board for a first computer for daughter. Who is now quite insistent about having a computer now that she's seen me working on it and keeps asking when I'll be finished!

So, there's that to do and then to move on to computer #3 when I get done! There's a really interesting project waiting for me, in the form of my other brother-in-law's old PowerBook G4 Titanium with a broken screen hinge, bad optical drive and generally ugly cosmetics.

All these projects are the unfortunately ugly underside of the technology treadmill. For me the hunt and kill (finding great deals on eBay and CL) is much more fun, but then there has to be the occasional bouts of housekeeping where I clean out, and try to fix up old stuff to be "retasked".