Lowepro Slingshot 200 All Weather Backpack (Black) by Lowepro
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Digital camera reviews of Lowepro Slingshot 200 All Weather Backpack (Black)
Digital camera Review: Good Day Trip Pack
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a good pack for day trips. I've had this pack for about 2 years now and I am satisfied with it.
It's good for:
-Day trips
-Limited gear
-Easy access
It's not good for:
-Bulky or a lot of equipment
-Carrying personal gear
-Long hikes/extended wear. The single strap can be uncomfortable after a long time (several hours of continuous wear), but it's not really designed for longer stuff. Also, I find that I take the pack off enough to shoot during the day that it gives me just enough of a break to not really be uncomfortable.
This is my "go-to" bag, I use it more than any other bag. LowePro did a nice job with the rain cover and stabilizer strap. I can use this on the bike, skiing, or hiking with confidence that my gear will be safe (and dry) and it won't move around on my back causing a balance issue. I would even fastpack/trail run with this pack, it's pretty darn secure. Last week I skied an entire day with this pack and didn't have any issues at all.
For reference of what this pack holds: I carry a body with a lens, a spare lens, a flash, spare batteries, circular polarizer, square split density filter (and mount), a "point and shoot" for video and a few other odds and ends. My pack is pretty full, but I can still find room for a few powerbars, phone and keys.
If you want the kitchen sink with you, don't get this pack, but if you're a minimalist or even a moderate-ist, this is a good choice. Look at the LowePro site for good videos of the bag in use, it might help give you a better size perspective.
Digital camera Review: Good Mid range bag
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this bag to use when I did not want to cart around my large camera bag. It has a decent amount of space. I carry 2 bodies, 2 lenses, a flash and the other small random stuff I need when I go out to shoot. The easy access is nice, especially when hiking, or shooting sporting events in dodgy weather. I would certainly recommend this bag if you are looking for somehting in between sizes.Digital camera Review: Good, and bad
Summary: 3 Stars
I originally purchased the 100, but after a trip to SF with my 20D, I realized my 70-300mm lens did not fit well, and the bag was a bit small for my needs. Since I loved the sling style, I decided to purchase the 200 (after reading lots of reviews, esp a detailed one from a R.Farah, I think) After running all over Asia with the Slingshot 200 for three weeks I still agree with EVERY single one of Farah's pros, but I have a few cons to add to the review.
First, I am a busty woman. In some parts of Asia a camera strap running between my "busts" was not appropriate,(and frankly, it is not comfortable either). Wearing the strap up higher meant that I had to keep adjusting it over the bust and under the arm, and I still felt like it brought too much attention to that area.
Secondly, it was hot, and the strap dug. The strap really wore and chaffed on my right shoulder and my neck.
Third, even tho it is just the right size for my camera lens, the extra size made the camera compartment a bit too big and the camera fit too loose for my comfort. In addition, the weight and bulk difference between the 100 and the 200 was dramatic.
Lastly, the waist strap was not convenient to wear, so it was something to flop about constantly...plus bending over meant I had to grab the pack to avoid it whipping around the front of me, or over my right shoulder. This was also wearing, as I am active and had assumed that this would be a no-hands kind of bag with the available waist strap.
Ending in a positive light, I love how convenient it is to just whip the bag around and grab the camera! The Slingshot 200 held just the right amount of necessaries so that I did not need to carry another bag, and for day jaunts I find it the perfect bag. The rain sack also really came in handy, as it rained(poured is more like it) almost every day in Thailand! My camera never got a drop of water on it!
Note: I gave the smaller Slingshot 100 to a friend, and he absolutely loves it, and tells me every chance he gets.
Digital camera Review: Good, but could be better
Summary: 3 Stars
I've used this bag heavily for 2 years and I'd love to find a better bag. Using the sling to pull out my camera without setting down the bag is the primary reason I like it and still use it. But the one strap is not comfortable for long hikes and it is very unflattering on females. As a woman with a normal sized chest, I'm pretty embarrassed to use it if I'm wearing just a t-shirt. It either sits under your chest, pulling up (not a pretty site), or you need to pull the one strap just right so that it flattens your chest (and rubs you the wrong way). So it either makes you look like a dweeb or hurts. Not a great choice. Would *love* the same bag with backpack straps so you could chose to drop one and sling the pack around the front. Looking at either the LowePro Flipside or Tamrac 3548 Express. I think it's interesting that I can find no pictures of the Tamrac Velocity - I'm assuming it has the same problem where chests are involved.Digital camera Review: Good, high quality, but not perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
My comments specifically regard the Slingshot 200, which I purchased after reading online reviews and checking it out fairly thoroughly in person. The 200 seemed like a fairly ideal bag for my needs, but actual use has revealed a few idiosyncrasies that I didn't see mentioned in other reviews that prospective purchasers might benefit from being made aware of.
First, as other reviews have mentioned, the bag appears to be top notch in terms of construction quality. The zippers all work freely with no hang-ups or catches in their travel and can be easily zipped or un-zipped with a casual tug on their pulls. There are plenty of small pockets for memory cards, cables, spare batteries and the like - as many as a semi-serious amateur like myself would hope for. The size of the bag is ideal, too, for an amateur like myself - big enough for several medium-sized lenses, the camera itself and a flash - and possibly more, although as I will point out the bag is not ideally suited to be used in that way.
The greatest benefit of the Slingshot bags, as I see it, is accessibility. I like the fact that the bag is designed to be worn on the back, making it suitable for hiking and carrying over long distances, while its design also permits it to be rotated to the wearer's front for access to its contents. Not having to put the bag down in the mud or snow to change lenses is an important benefit.
The sling design has its limitations for me, however, in that most of the time I need to access the bag it is not to access the main camera compartment, but to access other compartments in order to change lenses or add or remove an external flash unit. Unfortunately, while access to the camera compartment is easy, access to the lens compartments is a bit problematic. The zipper-limiting buckles need to be released, and they are not quite the best design - they take a little more effort than some to release, seemingly more than should be necessary, and in practice I simply leave them un-buckled most of the time. The zippers then need to be further un-zipped, probably on both sides. The lens compartments can then be accessed, but the lenses will be arranged horizontally, pointing towards the wearer's front and therefore away from him or her. That makes the lenses not easily visible and also could make them prone to falling out, requiring extra care with the bag during this part of the operation. You will need to identify the lens or accessory you're looking for, then do the three-handed remove-one-lens-and-put-on-another drill while watching that the bag itself stays in a favorable orientation, possibly requiring a fourth hand. It can be done, of course, and is probably not quite as difficult as I am making it sound, but it is not quite the ideal effortless process I'd hoped for. Sitting down makes the task easier as the bag can be rotated upwards on your lap, but if you have a good place to sit down then you have obviated part of the benefit of the bag's sling-style accessibility.
The other major flaw the bag has for my use has to do with the very large size of the main camera compartment. In order to make the bag usable for pro DSLRs, this area has to accommodate very wide, tall cameras like the Nikon D3. When it is used with a consumer-sized camera like my D90, there is a great deal of space around the camera that can not efficiently be put to use. The bag is designed to accommodate the camera in such an orientation that the camera's bottom points towards the wearer's back. There is then room for a medium sized lens, mounted on the camera, pointing to the wearer's right. A removable divider forward of the lens - further to the wearer's right - can be positioned to accommodate a lens or flash unit in "front" of the camera. (By moving this divider all the way to the right side of the bag, the compartment for the lens mounted to the camera becomes long enough to accommodate a medium sized lens, like my 16-85mm VR, with its shade fully deployed.)
I find that my D90 actually fits better in the case when I rotate it so that the camera's bottom points towards the bottom of the bag - that is, downwards when the bag is being worn. This lets the camera fit more snugly forward in its space for a better, more protective fit in the bag. This actually leaves enough space around the camera that an additional lens/flash compartment could be made to fit above the camera, and another below it. Unfortunately, the bag is not designed to be used this way and has neither the velcro surfaces nor dividers necessary to configure it in this way, causing these spaces to be effectively wasted. If the bag had been fitted with velcro and dividers that could be configured to make this space usable, it would have much more usable capacity and would meet my needs much better. Not only that, but these additional compartments would be exposed when the main camera compartment of the bag was opened, improving accessibility to two lens/flash spaces, which would also be an improvement in the design.
All the bag's lens compartments are the same depth - the depth of the bag - with no ability to configure any of them for "double-decker" lens/flash storage. While two small lenses could fit in one of these compartments, the user will have to find some method of protecting them from one another to do so. On the other hand, there is no good way to fit even one large lens, which will be an important disadvantage for some. The depth of the lens compartments is about 5", maybe stretchable to 6" or so if you're willing to put up with a tight fit. The only way to carry a lens longer than this is to put the lens in the portion of the bag designed for the camera itself and to position the camera, body-only, elsewhere. While possible, again the dividers are not configured to be used this way - they will not velcro in place in this configuration and will leave large undivided portions in other areas of the bag. I see this configuration shown in some of the product photos above. It is not ideal. It might be possible to carry a slightly larger lens - around 7" length - in the bag's top compartment, although this compartment is not well padded. You will also be giving up the bag's only suitable compartment for carrying large-ish non-camera items - a pair of gloves or a windbreaker, etc.
That large top compartment will, however, comfortably hold a D90-sized camera body with cap, which suggests another configuration for the bag. By storing the body in the top compartment, more and larger lenses could be stored in the bag's main compartment, some of which could be accessed very easily in use. You could store the camera until you reach your shooting site, choose a lens, and switch among your most-used lenses very easily while shooting. The only problem with this possibility is that - again - the main compartment is not designed to be subdivided in this way. Those lenses not stored in dedicated compartments would need to be kept in some sort of protective bag or container of their own, which you would need to fiddle with during access, and they would be free to bang around and move around inside the bag while it was being carried. Perhaps one could custom-install some additional dividers, but without velcro to attach them to in this part of the bag it would not be a trivial undertaking.
Finally, there is no good provision for attaching a tripod or monopod to the outside of the bag. It would have been easy enough to provide a couple of loop straps on the right side of the bag for this purpose, but it would probably have increased the cost and maybe would have been a somewhat awkward solution due to the bag's modest size. Nevertheless, I would have found it welcome. As it is, the bag for me is suitable strictly for occasions when additional camera support will not be required. There are three rubber loops provided on the outside of the bag for attaching additional items, and these will accommodate things that are designed to fit on a belt, such as perhaps a GPS case or cell-phone case. They are not stretchable and I don't see any way to use them to attach larger or more varied items.
The bag is a good design for somebody comfortable with these limitations and I can recommend it highly for those people. It is a fairly innovative, high quality piece of gear and may be the best solution available for those who require its features and are not bothered by its limitations.