Camera Bags Are A Trap

Stop thinking of camera bags as storage and transport

My other tiny film camera love, the OM system. “Full-frame 35mm” with an impossibly big viewfinder. Smaller is better in most cases but kind of misses the mark when bloated up with a dozen other gadgets just because you own them.

If you’ve been involved in making photographs for more than a minute, there’s a good chance you have way more photography stuff than you need. There are many reasons for the accumulation of photo gear. Some of them are necessities. Some are aspirational. Some are to make a particular endeavor more efficient. Some might even be critical to making a specific picture at all. And yes, many of the cameras, lenses, filters, clamps, mounts, and the myriad of other stuff is just because you wanted it.

The accumulation of photography-related stuff is so common that everyone knows there’s a term for it: Gear acquisition syndrome, commonly known as G.A.S. As the pile of photography gear grows, there’s another related syndrome that’s not discussed much. It’s far worse than the cameras, lenses, tripods, tripod heads, and all the other really fun stuff. It’s camera bag bloat.

As that perfect camera bag you found after buying three other ones becomes more and more bloated, it eventually won’t fit even one more SD card. What do you do now? Why, of course, you get a bigger one, a backpack, eventually a backpack with rollers and a collapsing handle. Maybe you get a modular one that can store all your stuff with a little mini-one that can be detached from the mother ship on occasion.

Don’t worry, the camera industry has a solution for that problem. Just buy another camera. This time, buy one with a fixed lens and use that because your other one is married up with all that other stuff in the giant bag you have to haul around. You’re good now, at least for a while, except there are things you need or want for that camera, and of course, a really perfect small camera bag that’s perfect for your small, fixed-lens camera.

And then it happens, there’s a new model of that fixed-lens camera with a different focal length... you know the perfect lens those couple of times you felt a little limited. Just one more bag. A bag just a little bit bigger, a tiny bit, perfect for those two fixed-lens cameras. But what about those trips where you might want the full armada but also might want just one of your fixed-lens “simple system” cameras too?

Of course, you rearrange all your stuff in a dozen different “optimized” theoretical kits over and over and have these all prepared combinations with all different bags “ready to go”. In fact, you have more camera bags than you do cameras now... You probably have little cases and kits of storage “solutions” that go inside other storage “solutions”.

A way off this crazy train

Immediately stop combining camera cases and kits as storage and transportation. Get rid of that notion now. Instead, imagine a completely different way of doing things. Divide your photographic gear into storage; in a perfect world, that would be a big stationary, easy-to-see set of shelves and/or drawers where all of your photo-stuff lives.

Opposite that perfect-world storage and organization, you’d have a collection of great, perfect, already accumulated camera bags for transportation and use “in the field” wherever that might be today. I did this a long time ago, and something great happened.

The great thing that happened was that the vast majority of the time, I just took one camera with one lens attached to it. And of course, battery or two and a memory card in my pocket. Yep, no bag. I was far less distracted with whatever that day’s goal was. I was far less distracted with subjects out of the range of what I decided to bring. Even better, I approached subjects more creatively without all the mental clutter.

Those other times when I opted for “more stuff” and more capability, my camera bag choice was small. In fact, it more often than not turned out to be a Domke FX5. This tiny bag will not hold a typical full-frame DSLR or mirrorless camera with a lens attached. Doesn’t matter as I have and continued to use it to add a tiny bit more capability, storage, batteries, and maybe a charger. Doesn’t matter what camera or system, that tiny bag that has minimal compartments and flexible space, it does the job.

Just two examples that see a lot of use: My big-boy Canon 5DsR with attached f/4 class zoom with a fast prime in the bag and some other bits like batteries. Sometimes it’s the same with a super-wide. On other occasions, it’s the Canon R6 with a cheap RF 50/1.8 attached and a cheapy RF 35/1.8 Macro in the bag with batteries, a ColorChecker, a notebook and pencil. Sometimes a Profoto A10 and clamp is in the bag. You get the idea.

Sure, you may not want to rearrange your entire photographic life into that shelf/draw storage vs. transport. Go ahead, keep using all those camera bags as storage, but instead of grabbing that full, do-it-all, or most of it kit, grab one of those long-forgotten small bags. Better yet, just grab your camera and the lens you are going to use today.