Nearly every traveling photographer I know lusts after the ‘perfect’ camera bag. I am, perhaps, the biggest romantic of them all. No matter how many alternatives fill my closets and clutter my office shelves, the dream of finding that ‘perfect’ multi-purpose bag remains alluring.
Problem is, I ask a lot of a camera bag, especially for air travel. It needs to provide travel-tough protection, be carry-on sized and not only transport a full arsenal of camera bodies, lenses and digital accessories, but a laptop too.
Enter the Lowepro Stealth Reporter D650 AW.
Ellen Barone is an American writer and wanderer. She co-founded and publishes the group travel blog YourLifeIsATrip.com and is currently at work on her first book "I Could Live Here".
This day bag by Tilley Endurables is the perfect city carry-all, yet tough enough for adventure. I prefer the ease of access of this padded, rainproof shoulder bag to that of a backpack. Not to mention the handiness of eleven pockets, inside key-clip, conveniently located pen pockets, Velcro-closed side pockets perfect for a water bottle and cell phone, and waterproof interior pockets that’ll keep important documents dry even in a downpour. It’s spacious enough to carry a bulky zoom lens and conceal an expensive SLR while you dine or in a pub, where you’d rather not rest it on the tabletop or sling it over a chair back, while its school-bag look doesn’t scream camera bag to thieves. It also passes macho-muster with my husband who I’ve finally trained to carry his own stuff (no more, “honey, can you put this in your purse?”).
$185.00; www.tilley.com
Ellen Barone is an American writer and wanderer. She co-founded and publishes the group travel blog YourLifeIsATrip.com and is currently at work on her first book "I Could Live Here".
By now you probably suspect that if I can go ga-ga over a laptop bag, the right suitcase could probably send me over the moon. You wouldn’t be wrong. My husband and I both own this bag and won’t even look at another. Why would we? We’ve watched our Patagonia Freewheeler take a fall from the top of a heap from a makeshift luggage cart on a rustic airstrip in Myanmar, without so much as a torn corner or bent frame. It’s trailed after us over cobbled streets and bounced up railway station steps, been dropped roughly from the rooftops of third-world buses and lashed to camels in the Sahara. And, when it finally did, after a decade of traveling the world, tear slightly along a seam, when we returned it to Patagonia for repair, they sent us a new one - free.
Made from tough ballistic cloth nylon, this water-repellent free-wheeling suitcase sports the same wheels as those found on the best inline skates. The designers at Patagonia seem to have thought of everything a traveler needs: Its duffle-style top compartment collapses snuggly into a hard-sided bottom to slide easily under a ship’s bed or the floor of a hotel closet and a zippered lower compartment keeps your shoes and dirty laundry separate. $350.00; www.patagonia.com
Ellen Barone is an American writer and wanderer. She co-founded and publishes the group travel blog YourLifeIsATrip.com and is currently at work on her first book "I Could Live Here".