Originally posted by magkelly 
$24 on a 515 Tamrac holster bag which as it turns out I never use because it attracts too much attention whenever I do. I ended up giving it to my youngest niece to tote her Barbie toys in. It turned out to just be useless. I prefer messenger bags, preferably bags that don't even look remotely like they might be holding camera gear and that I can reinforce with craft wire and inserts. The one advantage of a thick, hard sided insert in a regular bag is it's a lot harder for someone to slash the bag and take your gear as it falls. I got the Manhattan Portage insert for a reason. It's pretty tough and would be hard to cut all the way through on it's own.
I have a braided wire and fleece insert that I made. I did the MacGyver thing. I put it around and under the MP insert and I've also wired the straps of all my bags and my camera strap and put covers on those so potential thieves can't see the wires. I have a kilt pin through the zipper and into and through the bag on my body's side of things. I can still release it fairly quickly if I need to get at my camera but it's basically locked when I'm just walking around. I wear my bag cross body and I don't just walk around with the camera on a strap around my neck or body when I am not shooting. Anyone who wants to get my gear they will really have to work for it. They might get it if they shoved a gun in my face but otherwise the whole dash and grab thing, or lately the punch, dash and grab thing, that's going to be very, very hard for them to manage in my case.
I tend to think that any camera bag with a known label on it is just asking for trouble. The more stealth things are or the more ridiculous they look, the safer I feel actually. That's why I also blinged out my little Oly cam. I wanted to make it look old, and silly, and not at all like anything they would even want. If all potential thieves see upon a first glance is a junky $40 drugstore cam and what looks like a school bag when they look at me? That's just fine by me. At this point I would not spend the $$$ for a more expensive, more well known bag even if I had it to spend. A bag like that just screams "Expensive gear in here!" and that's the last thing I want.
Forgive my Canadian ignorance, but are you saying that someone will come and cut open your bag and take their contents as they fall out? I'm being serious cause I've never heard of this!
On topic, i bought the Dakine Mission backpack for $120. It had two main attractions for me. Firstly, it looks like a normal backpack as opposed to a camera bag. Secondly, it has an insert (which is huge, I should never need anything bigger) that I can remove when I actually want it to be a normal backpack (which is 75% of the time), so it works out well for me
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