> Thanks to whoever it was who planted that seed (holster/belt pack) in my
> mind. I set out thinking I wanted a Mini or Micro Trekker, but upon
> reflection, I realized I still want to be able to wear a regular daypack
with
> lunch, gorp, water bottle, binoculars, 10 essentials, etc. for many of the
> trips I have in mind. I don't want to cram food, water, and OM gear all
> together in the same backpack. Too much chance for disaster doing that.
I'm in exactly the same situation, and basically for the same reasons;
lenses in cases in backpack seems to work okay, but I never bother putting
the body back into a case, so that's the thing that rattles around the
most.. The hassle factor is also pretty noticeable; stop, backpack off,
rummage around to find lens case A, open case, swap lenses over, old lens in
case, case in backpack, backpack on again. I'd much rather have the lenses
available more easily.
> I can easily spin the Orion around my waist from back to front in a jiffy,
> and have the camera up in action almost as fast as getting it out of the
> neveready case when hanging around my neck, which is NOT a comfortable way
to
> carry it when hiking. And of course, I can leave the top, or the entire
> eveready case off the camera, it's so well-protected inside the Orion. No
> case to take off for film change!
This is the main reason I leave the camera rattling around -- there's
enough other stuff to pad it against, but it's still pretty iffy.
How comfortable are belt packs in active use? I'm looking for something I
can wear when mountain biking -- I know a backpack works, and I know it
keeps things on bits of me that are relatively suspended, so everything
doesn't rattle around too much; putting it on a belt pack means it's that
much closer to the trail.
The other problem I have is that I'd want to carry a fairly long lens with
me for opportune wildlife shots (granted, I've only had one really decent
chance for this stuff, which, by some miracle, happened to be the time I'd
brought the camera with me) and it's too large to fit in the smaller LowePro
cases -- so I'd need one of the ones that takes side pouches for lenses,
which leaves quite a lot of stuff bouncing around my waist.
Trying one on in the shop and jumping up and down it seemed okay, but I
don't know how well it would work when riding, I'll admit. On the upside,
it'd be a lot less sweaty..
Other considerations are that I'd like to end up with something I can use
to carry camera kit around when _not_ hiking/biking/etc, so I'm looking for
something I can carry not as a waistpack; the LowePro OffTrail2/OffRoad seem
to come in this category, but they're pretty large. Positive side: I can
carry more kit with me. Negative side: why not just get a backpack at that
stage? If it's a really large backpack, I can always carry the camera kit
inside the big one, and if it's a hiking-sized pack it probably wouldn't
interact that well with a waist bag anyway.
I'm looking for something that'll hold a body, long zoom, macro lens,
wide-angle, possibly extension tubes, possibly teleconverter, flash(?)
tripod(?) and a bunch of film/other bits and bobs, which puts me at the
large end of belt packs, or the small end of backpacks, in a sort of awkward
mid-ground.
Any opinions/experiences will be very welcome!
thanks,
-- dan
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