Veteran Member Registered: December, 2010 Location: East of Everywhere, Canada Posts: 740 | | Review Date: September 21, 2012 | Not Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 2 |
| Pros: | rain cover | | Cons: | small bag, small pockets, uncomfortable, unstable, flap allows things to fall out | |
The Lowepro AW 100 is a surprisingly poorly-designed camera bag. I
must admit to being perplexed by the positive reviews I've seen. I have to
conclude they were written by people with small amounts of gear who
didn't need to carry it far, and did not need to get at their equipment very
often while carrying it.
It's a small bag, and might do if you have one small body and a couple
of lenses. The "generous" outside pockets (described by the
advertising) are anything but. The front pocket was just big enough for
two polarizers, a notepad and a pen, and I had to pry into the corner to
get at the pen, and take the front polarizer out to get at the one behind it.
In the top pocket I was able to cram an auxiliary point-&-shoot, 4 thin
grad filters and a spare roll or two of film. Oh, and a spare key in the
pocket behind.
The main part of the bag has velcro-tabbed dividers with room for one
small lens and one bigger one; these are not really adjustable. Between
them is space for a camera with another smallish lens, but since the
dividers are not of equal height, the camera body sits crooked across
them.
Right from the start, I found this bag awkward. It hangs over one
shoulder, and yes, I carried bags over my shoulder all through school,
and occasionally still carry knapsacks that way, but that generally
requires hanging onto the strap. This bag has a "stability strap" which
is basically a thin little strap that goes around your ribs on the other side
and up to the shoulder strap. This is awkward, and likely wouldn't work
well for a large woman. It doesn't really stabilize the bag. If you wiggle a
bit, it will still slide down off your shoulder. I would not want to climb over
difficult terrain with it. I think it could very easily slip and unbalance the
wearer.
In 10 or 15 minutes of messing with it I could not make the bag slide
around the way it's illustrated in the picture on the card; it appears that
the company has printed the picture backwards.
It does slide under your (other) arm. You can half-unzip the main compartment
to get a camera out. However, you can't get at lenses without unzipping
further, and herein is a huge design flaw.
My biggest problem with the bag is this central compartment. This is
truly the worst-designed idea for a camera bag I've ever seen. The bag
is shaped like a knapsack. It sits upright like a knapsack. The flap,
however, opens sideways like a cupboard. This means your lenses are
sitting on these little velcro dividers, wide open to falling out. If you use
the "zip stop strap" it will keep that flap from opening farther, but then
you can't get at things deeper in the bag. The bag is not suitable for
frequent lens changes because you really need to put it down to open it
all the way. Even this is not safe. Thanks to this poor design, my best
lens fell out of the open flap onto a cement wharf, denting the filter ring
so that it could no longer be used. The bag was already on the ground
and I had just taken hold of it and begun to move it. This would never
happen with a bag that opens from the top, with equipment tucked
securely down inside.
After the accident I showed the bag to two people. One knows so little
about photography that she asked if the lens falling out had hurt my
pictures. She thought it was a poor design. The other is a long-time
camera club member/judge and a draftsman by trade. His comment
would be censored by this website.
I'm not sure why I'm giving this bag any stars; I guess because it's better
than nothing if you only have a small kit and don't need to get into your
bag often. Or, maybe for the rain cover that untucks from the back -- it
covers the whole bag. That was a pretty good idea. (And, for that
matter, it'll keep things from falling out of pockets. You won't be able to
get into them, but your stuff won't fall out...)
I had to mail the damaged lens to a repair centre. The total bill came to
$100.59. The accident was a direct result of the design of the bag and
Lowepro will be getting a copy of the bill. I do not really expect a reply.
I will not be using this bag again.
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Pentaxian Registered: April, 2011 Location: Lost in translation ... Posts: 18,076 | | Review Date: April 28, 2012 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Comfortable, practical, build, swing around for DSLR access via zippered flap ... | | Cons: | Maybe too small for me now ... upper compartment a bit tiny, enlarged on newer version plus addition of a tripod holder system | |
Bonjour,
This is a great bag of which I picked up a used copy at my French B&M photo store. It was in "like new" condition and not expensive ... the newer version had been released and this bag was "discontinued" ... despite the fact that plenty of new ones could still be purchased via Internet.
Overall quite pleased with this very useful backpack.
Salut, John le Frog
PS - FYI, the reviews of the successor SlingShot bag, the 102AW, is in the camera BAG section ...
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