Lessons

Lesson Info

The Gadget Bag: Custom Cases

Alright, so with bags, there's not much to be said on the bags. It's a lot of personal choice on how much gear you're gonna be taking and what you're gonna be using with it. Back in the old days, they had things called Ever Ready cases. Now the people in the camera store kind joked and called them never ready cases, because your camera was never ready to shoot a photograph and they were designed for people who bought one camera, one lens, and that was it, that's all they did. But that's not what we do. We like to have several lenses. And so we end up buying a camera bag but then we need to buy another bag for the new lens that we bought, so we usually end up buying some sort of shoulder bag. And the shoulder bag is a good general purpose bag that I think most photographers are gonna find very useful for a lot of different types of general purpose work. And so these are some of the more popular brands out there, they all make some nice designs. One of the things that I look for is a bag...

that doesn't look like a camera bag. I just don't like to be real loud about, hey everybody, I've got a bunch of expensive camera gear here. I like to try to maintain a low profile when I'm out shooting so I have a couple of the Think Tank bags that I really like. I think they make a nice, slim design. One of the complaints that I've had in the past, and this is kind of the opposite complaint you might think, is I think a lot of the camera bags are overly padded. You can't get very much stuff in them because they have these huge, gigantic pads in there. And it's as if we're gonna take the camera bag and we're just gonna sling it up against the wall and you know, generally we need a little bit of padding but we don't need gigantic, thick foam in there. Unless we are gonna be checking it onto an airplane, which this is not the right tool for doing that. A hard case is what you'd wanna do if you need to check something on a plane. And so there are a number of hard cases if you are carrying larger amounts of gear. Pelican is the go to name in hard cases for water proof cases like if you have a river rafting trip and you wanna take a camera on there. The Pelican case is kind of interesting. I've been in photography for thirty plus years now, and Pelican has been the company that has been there the whole time and I have seen about a dozen companies rise and fall saying, we're gonna take down Pelican. We're gonna have hard shell cases and we're gonna price it under them by about fifty percent, and we're gonna take over the market. And they just never last and it's the Pelicans that stay there and just keep on working. The sling bags are kinda fun for people in an urban environment where they wanna carry a little bit more equipment and they just kinda wanna sling it around, get access to their equipment. Lot of different styles of messenger style bags and this is nice for kind of an in between amount of equipment. Can be real good like if you're riding a bicycle, you throw it on your back and you can ride your bike, hop off, sling, that way you don't have to put the camera bag down on the ground. So these can be kind of nice for traveling, because I don't like taking the bag off and putting it down on a dirty environment in some cases. If you wanna carry a lot of equipment, the most comfortable way to carry heavy equipment is in a backpack system. It is not easy to shoot with this in some cases because it's all on your back and you need to have access to it. Some of them, like the Lowe Pro Fastpack, this is one of the models that I have, it's kinda nice because you can use it as a sling bag and have access to the side of it. But if you are carrying more equipment, these are really, really comfortable if you're gonna be walking around all day. And I often use these because I'm usually carrying as much equipment as I think I can possibly carry and still be happy with during that day. John, I have about twenty people asking, can you tell us again what that Gitzo travel tripod is. So the travel tripod is a, trying to go from memory here, so hoping it's right, it is a GT 1545 T, GT 1545 T, because G stands for Gitzo, T stands for tripod. One is the, it's largest tube of the leg. And it is, five is their designation for carbon fiber. It is a four section tripod and it is the fifth version of that tripod. Now I did put a really right stuff, thirty millimeter ballhead on the top of it. And so it does not work perfectly when folded in reverse. Could we hand me that small one real quick? Smallest one. And so if I wanna reverse this and, won't take long. I can do this in less than ten seconds. Nice thing is that you don't have to turn those very far. And so there is another head from Gitzo, but it doesn't fit my camera plate system, that makes this get a little bit smaller. And so it's a little bit wider here. And so it's not a hundred percent perfect but I have the head that I like and I don't reverse it like this unless I'm really going on an airplane. I don't use this. Like in the middle of the day if I'm out shooting with this tripod, I would not do this. I would just simply leave it in its normal position without the center post, like this. In fact, one of the things about this one is that it comes with a shorty post so if you know you're not gonna be using the center post and that's how I normally have it, is I don't even have the center post. I don't even wanna be tempted to be using the center post. Because I know if I do, someone will see me and say, you said don't use the center post. So I gotta be very careful about how I photograph in public. Alright, everyone, that was the GT 1545 from Gitzo. There's a T on the end of it, which stands for the traveler's section. And so one of the little travel tips for you. Can we throw away my little travel tips from my travel photography class, is I would like using a backpack like that when I travel because what happens is I'll put the computer in there and the camera equipment when I get on board the plane. And then when I get to the actual destination and I'm kinda going in and out of the hotel room, I'll take the computer out, leave it locked in my suitcase, and in that slot, it's kind of an odd slot, but I can fit an extra shirt, a coat in there or something like that. Perfect to put a coat in there because it's usually right up against your back and that gives you a little extra cargo room for those extra little things that you might wanna bring. Alright, a few more little questions here. How do you feel about the gorilla pods? And what are those? So the gorilla pods are a table top tripod and I do have, not a gorilla pod, but I have my own table top tripod here. So if you watch my fast start classes, this is the one I'm now using in there. And so having a table top tripod can be really nice. The problem with table top tripods is that we often don't have a table to put it on. And so that's like a really inconvenient place to be shooting with but sometimes it's nice to get a really low angle and so if you do have a table or some sort of wall to shoot off of, it can be really handy. Now the gorilla ones can actually wrap around poles and things, tree branches and stuff and that can be very handy if that's what you need. There is one tip that I can show you on how to use one of these to creatively get this in a new position. So let's just say this table was not here. Let's pretend this is not a TV but it's just a flat wall. I'm not gonna damage the TV, my producer. Okay, well, and if I wanted to get an eye level shot of you but I needed a one second exposure, here's what I would do. I would mount the camera to this, and then I would just hold this against, we can imagine this is a wall. I would just hold this here, and I can hold it here steady and it's not gonna move, because I'm putting more pressure on it this way than gravity is pushing on it in the other direction. So as long as I have a solid surface in which to hold this, I can hold it even for a twenty second, thirty second exposure, I could hold it in place. Because it's not really capturing my vibration if I'm putting a lot of pressure on it. And so these can be very handy in many situations, and if you're going hiking, you end up constantly looking, is there a rock I can put this on? Or with the gorilla pods you might be able to find a tree branch that you can put them on and so they're a handy little device. Make sure that it's strong enough to hold whatever piece of equipment you wanna put on it. So if you're putting an SLR with a medium size lens, the cheap ten dollar tripods will not cut it in most cases. You talked about some of the lenses that come with a tripod collar so that if they're big and you kinda stabilize them more. Does it have to be a lens that has that already or do you know if they make generic ones that you can put on any lens? So this is the hundred millimeter macro lens from Canon, and if I recall correctly, I don't think this came with a tripod collar. It did not, but it has a specially designed place for the collar to go and in the instruction manual, it says the optional collar and it gives a particular number that I don't recall off the top of my head, will fit on here and so I can mount it onto this. Lock it in and then tighten it in, and so now I can shoot with this in a vertical position or a horizontal position without changing the position of the lens and so it has to be something that it generally is designed with. I remember the first Nikon eighty to two hundred, two point eight autofocus lens did not have a tripod collar. And it was a big, heavy lens, and so Kirk, the tripod manufacturer, made an after market one that did happen to fit onto it. They made a way for it to fit on, and it was an after market solution, so it is conceivably possible, but most likely, it's gonna have to be something that's designed from the factory for it. People are starting to ask some travel questions about how do I pack my bags and what kind of things do I do when I travel, so, I know you've got a class on that. The travel photography class deals a lot with logistics and gear that is designed for that type of work. We also talk about techniques and talking to people and going through markets and different things to look for there and so the travel photography class is a great little pre-trip prep. If you're gonna be taking that big trip and you wanna get ready, that would be a fun class to have. And so obviously, we have the other classes we've been talking about. Something that we did talk a lot about in today's classes was the extra information that is buried in your camera's menu system. And so going through those fast start classes will help you understand the focusing systems on your camera so if you like the focusing system and you really wanna master and figure out what's going on on your camera and recommended settings, I do go through those in the fast start classes. And then obviously with the focusing, understanding how the lens works and how to get the most out of it. There's a lot involved and it may seem hard to believe that we spend two days but it is a jam-packed two days of lens talk going through those lens classes. So, some other good choices if you like my visual classes.