Deal o' the Day

The Lowepro Versapack 200 All-Weather backpack is available right now for the pain-free price of less than $50 from B&H, marked down from $120—that's more or less $70 off, as I guess you know if you are capable of doing simple arithmetic in your head.

It has a lightly padded upper compartment for personal items and a more heavily padded lower compartment for camera gear, and can be configured in several different ways so you can access it in different ways and to accommodate different camera outfits.

Yr. Hmbl. Ed. doesn't use backpacks, and TOP has never once published a post about camera bags (that I can recall, anyway), but my friends at B&H tell me this is a popular backpack among photographers and is selling briskly at the sale price. More pics at the link.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kalli: "I don't particularly care for backpacks for camera gear, but sometimes I seem to need one (less so after I went Micro 4/3). I've had a the Versapack for probably over three years and I like it very much. First off, it's light. The bag itself is no more than a kilo, I think. Second, it's made for a photographer who's actually also a human being. By that I mean that it's not made for just carrying camera gear, but also the stuff a human might want to carry around for a long day's outing. As a bonus you can collapse it so that it becomes quite compact. Handy if you need to pack it into your suitcase, for example. So, yeah, this bag nut, who hates camera bags and dislikes backpacks, likes this one."

James Ullrich: "It would be nice if the backpack had the camera space on top and other on the bottom. Water bottles sometimes leak and it is better to have that on the bottom. Additionally, if a pack is set down hard, it is better that the camera stuff is on top."

Comments

[Hendrik]

Why this post? Isn't there enough deal flogging, coupon cutting, buying-things-you'd-never-thought-you-needed-but-hey-it's-so-damn-cheap going on already? You confess to not even using backpacks, so no real story at all here, nothing to educate me, amuse me, make me think--just another deal.

Wouldn't it be so much more worthwhile to pique our interest in a recently published photobook? Or, better still, run a series on the "100 photobooks every photo-nerd should have leafed thru if not own" or some such? (Just to name a topic with some connotations of generating income for the site.) Instead of propagating yet another deal?

On a final philosphical note, I think the "deals" (read: more for less) craze is more of a problem for our values, resources, and way of life than it is ever a solution.

[I thought I just explained this. I have to earn enough for a new house. --Mike]

[Kevin Purcell]

Nice images at

http://www.lowepro.com/versapack

and Amazon has some useful user comments.

http://www.amazon.com/Lowepro-Versapack-200-AW-Backpack/

Not really for full-sized DSLR with a battery grip but a "small" DSLR (D300 and down) and a couple of lenses will fit.

Simple review with good pictures

http://www.cambags.com/bag-type/backpacks/item/174-lowepro-versapack-200-aw.html

[Benjamin Marks]

I do use backpacks, ever since I discovered that a bag with a camera and several lenses slung over one shoulder meant back pain by the end of a day of urban walking. So: the nerd factor is high, but it is great to be pain-free.

Parenthetically, if you go into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with a photo backpack, you will be asked by the guards to wear it over both shoulders front-wise, like a baby bjorn, instead of slung over one shoulder, like a handbag or a shoulder-mounted camera bag or in its intended configuration. "Why is this so?" I asked the guard. "Because it is printed on the museum map," said the guard. Hmm. But there it is. So: backpacks for me, UNLESS I am going to the met, where idiocy reigns. Grrrrrrr.

[Robert]

Mike, I hope you earned a few dollars towards the new house as B&H seem to have sold out of the back pack.

[k4kafka]

I don't see a price on the B&H Photo link. But I do see "Discontinued" in red.

[David]

Well, I missed that deal and %%$T!!, The zipper on my old bike cam pack just crapped out and your mention of this "deal" was looking promising for a pack when Im shooting on the bike platform.

And, I wonder where the "issue" is with a brief post on something that's a "deal" and could be useful and affordable for many of us?? There is no issue..Deal o The Day!!..damn,I missed it cause I was out getting my teeth rustproofed. Mike, Make MO Money!! I would think that just about every one who stalks this site would say "do what you need to do".

[Stan B.]

Backpacks are great for transporting your gear from point A to B, and absolutely useless in actual shooting conditions. They also guarantee one helluva slimy back in summer.

[Sarge]

Buying inexpensive but functional camera bags is no more consumerist (if at all) than buying hand-stitched "bespoke" leather camera half-cases with straps, that are frightfully expensive and offers no protection (save for the "old school" cachet it invests the wearer).

A cheap Lowepro neoprene pouch (which I posted in a Comment sometime ago) saved me from much grief, when I slipped on a rock and dunked my GRD IV in the river. My P&S remained bone dry even if the pouch wasn't rated waterproof. (Only the bottom half of the pouch, which I wore around my neck, got dunked.)

My other camera bag is a Crumpler "clam shell" belt cum shoulder bag which easily accommodates my wrist-strapped GXR-M with a wide angle lens mounted, and a mild telephoto lens (plus filters, cards, lens cloths in multiple pockets within the camera compartment). It's a well-damped handsome bag which offers ample impact protection and doesn't look like a camera bag (good for urban "gates-of-hell" settings).

Unfortunately, the Crumpler isn't waterproof. It also got dunked in the river (when my companion, an ex-soldier who offered to carry it for me, slipped on a dodgy river rock). The GXR stopped working in the field because some moisture seeped into the battery compartment. After a few hours air-drying back home, the GXR was none the worse for it. The manual got soaked though. (I hope my dealer in Jakarta doesn't read this because its a loaner :)

What I really need is a small, damped, waterproof hard case (e.g., Pelican) which floats or can survive a drop in a ravine (if you can find it). You can chuck it in any old backpack with your other personal effects for hands-free trekking or island hopping.

If you need a backpack to accommodate all your gear, you haven't planned your photo shoot outing, well.

[Rob L.]

The reason for the Met rule (I've seen it elsewhere) is the tendency of photogs to swing their packs around and hit passersby—or, far worse, exhibits—with 20-40 lbs of camera gear.

[Ed]

How freindly from the MET that they let you enter at all, in most European museums they ask you to stuff your belongings in a locker (and retreive them at your own risk). Photography not allowed.

But hey, sorry Mike, but photobackpacks are anyway the stupidest invention ever (and the list of stupid inventions is long and prospers). But great for steeling gear, distract the photographer on the anterior end (preferebly by a goodlooking girl that is oh so lost) and steel his belongings at the unguarded posterior end (no personal experience).

Nice for hiking though but since the Netherlands is not that hikable anyway. The great outdoors here is accesible by public transport and the last bear was shot dead in the late 19th century, though roumors have it, it asked to be put out of it's missery for living in Holland. So a photobackpack is not something I need.

Greets, Ed.

[Colin Work]

I've got a bit of an obsession with camera bags (I may have more than my wife has handbags) - but it is important to get it right.

I have a Fastpack 250 (very similar in design) which is my "everyday" bag. The design works well for me with my 4/3 outfit - the cameras are very secure and padded in the bottom section and I have no qualms chucking it around.

With regard to waterproofing, I'm trying out something called the Aquapac. Basically its a large drybag (designed, I think, for sailors). While it has no compartments or padding, it is large enough so that I can just drop the Fastpack inside it when needed (which saves repacking gear). It floats with quite a lot of weight in it - though I haven't been brave enough to chuck it over the side with my cameras inside!

Colin

[Roger Bradbury]

I often use an ex army medical bag. It is lined with an inch of aircon duct anti-vibration foam which protects the contents when the bag is in a motorcycle pannier. I've done this for years with film and digital SLRs and lenses, and there's no damage so far. (Touch wood)

It takes one DSLR with 16-50mm lens plus a couple of smallish lenses, or a flashgun. Of course in my film days it was an SLR with three or four lenses and a flashgun.

By the way, a camera rigidly mounted on the back rack of a moving bike (an old Jap 4 cylinder machine) vibrates so much that 1/500th sec and shake reduction isn't always enough to ensure sharp photos.