How to buy the best camera bag

Some fundamental photography kit often goes unnoticed, and the humble camera bag is the perfect example. Without it you’d be lost – shoving lenses and kit into coat pockets. Yet many people are quick to buy the cheapest bag they can get their hands on, unaware that spending a little time shopping around and investing in a good quality model can literally help to take the weight off your shoulders,leaving you to concentrate on what’s really important – taking photographs.

A camera bag gives you somewhere to keep all your kit safe and sound and in one place. If that stops it getting left lying around the house, chewed up by pets and children, or trodden on by your better half, then all the better for you and your precious kit.

So, what should you look for in a new camera bag? Well, that all depends on what you’re after. Do you regularly Spend all day outdoors, carrying a selection of kit and walking from location to location? Or do you only ever Carry your camera and perhaps one other lens with you for a couple of hours at a time?

On the most basic level, your choice will come down to either a traditional shoulder bag or an increasingly popular backpack design. If you only go out at weekends and carry, for instance, a Canon 450D and 18-55mm IS kit lens, plus a compact telephoto zoom lens, a small shoulder bag may be all you need.

But if you carry three or four big lenses and a weighty EOS-1Ds, plus a back-up camera body, and you’re on shoots every other day, then that’s a lot of weight to put on one shoulder – so you may be better off with a backpack-style bag.

Work out, on average, what gear you normally carry, how often and for how long, and then you can choose a bag to suit your requirements.