Black Shadow Photography

Serious photographers seem to be on a never ending quest for the perfect camera bag. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as different bags, back packs or systems work better than others depending on the situation.

For a while I have been looking for a good solution for carrying my gear when photographing events such as music festivals – after a bit of research I decided that the Think Tank Photo (www.thinktankphoto.com) belt system might be the answer I needed so I ordered their Skin Set, Pro Speed Belt, a Modular Chimp Cage and a pixel Racing Harness. This setup allows a photographer to carry cameras, lenses and other assorted bits and pieces around their waist instead of in a bag or a pack.

I decided to try it out at the Melbourne Big Day Out, the Big Day Out is an all day music festival featuring 30+ acts performing at 8 different stages over 12 hours. There is a lot of walking involved; one photographer I know wore a pedometer at the Sydney Big Day Out this year and covered 21kms during the day. In the past I have been rather tired, stiff and sore after photographing a Big Day Out and lugging the associated gear around. So this was the perfect event to test out the Think Tank equipment.

The equipment is very well made – the skins pouches are fairly compact with not a lot of padding, the modular pouches offer more padding but with that padding comes extra bulk, the belt is very well put together and easy to adjust. The pouches can either be locked in place on the belt or left to slide along the belt – I chose to lock them in place. The harness attaches to the belt and it was all simple to set up.

The photographic equipment I took for the day was:

• A Canon 1D Mark III camera body
• Canon 5D camera body
• Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS lens
• Canon 24-70 f2.8L lens
• Canon 16-35 f2.8L II lens
• Canon M80 storage device
• A selection of spare batteries
• Compact Flash cards
• Sunscreen
• Smokes
• Blackberry

In all over 6kgs (13½ pounds) of gear.

Full kit taken to the Big Day Out.

As I was travelling to the event by public transport I stowed my camera bodies and lenses in various pouches around my waist and set off. I was very impressed by how comfortable it all was to both walk and sit in. Normally with a bag and that amount of gear you notice the weight but with everything strapped to my waist the weight was well distributed and not very noticeable.

Once I arrived I took out each of the camera bodies and attached the 70-200 to my 1D Mark III and the 24-70 to my 5D; I then put one on each shoulder (I use UPstraps a non-slip shoulder strap www.upstrap-pro.com) and it was off to work I went.

This system worked extremely well; there was no bag or pack to look after during the day, my cameras were right there when I needed them and all the gear I wasn’t using was securely strapped to my body yet easily accessible. Best of all was that after 12 hours of walking/shooting the fatigue I felt was minimal and the next day there was no muscle soreness/stiffness – that’s a big change and a huge advantage!

I couldn’t be happier with the Think Tank gear and have no hesitation recommending it to other photographers. Double thumbs up from me.