Reposted from FM forums..
With the start of hiking season quickly approaching, I've been on a quest to find a flexible, lightweight, well built daypack for hiking with some camera gear and I've finally found the perfect bag!
It's the Miwok, the largest of the trail running bags from
Gregory Packs (No personal affiliation with the company, just a happy customer). It's designed for moving fast and it is not specifically designed for photographers in mind but there are some very simple modifications that you can make to turn this awesome daypack into an even more awesome camera bag.
Here's a pic of the front, back and side...
Front
Back
Side
Although the Miwok looks quite small in person, it can hold a ton of gear and provide very good support so that the weight is well distributed between your waist and shoulders. The pack comes with both a wide and well padded waist belt as well as a sternum strap which can slide up and down along the shoulder harness to adjust to your fit. The shoulder harness and waist belt has a mesh fabric that provides good ventiliation. When wearing the pack, there's a slight arch in the back which loads the weight of the pack onto your shoulder and waist. This also gives you lots of ventilation for your back since there's a small gap between the pack and your back when worn.
Now for the part that makes this daypack an awesome camera bag. There are pockets everywhere inside and out! With so many pockets, I was able to fit the following without having any camera body, lens or accessory touching anything else:
Canon 5D2 w/ 16-35/2.8
Canon 70-200/2.8IS
Leica M8.2 w/ 28/2.8 Elmarit
Leica 50/2 Summicron
Leica 90/2.8 Tele-Elmarit
Rocket Blower
ThinkTank Pixel Pocket Rocket
2L Platypus Hydration Bladder
...and there was still room for more accessories.
The bag can be broken down into a larger main pocket and a slightly smaller secondary front pocket.
The secondary front pocket has two small mesh inner pockets that will fit small rangefinder lenses, card readers and memory card holders. One of the pockets even have a little attachment clip that can clip onto memory card holders like the ThinkTank Pixel Pocket Rocket. The main empty portion of the secondary front pocket is big enough to hold a rangefinder camera with the two small range finder lenses located in the internal mesh pockets shown below. Note that in the image below, the two lenses appear to be spilling out but the mesh pockets are actually quite deep.
In the main pocket, will hold a medium sized SLR and some zoom lenses provided you put in a camera holder insert. I just happen to have a ThinkTank ChangeUp and the insert from this bag fits perfectly into the main compartment of the Miwok. You can see this below with the empty insert as well as with a Canon 5D2 with a 16-35/2.8 II mounted as well as a 70-200/2.8IS right beside the body.
Inside the main compartment is another mesh pocket that will fit extra accessories such as a rocket blower, filter cases and memory card holders. There's also an external fleece-lined pocket that can hold an mp3 player, lens or cellphone to keep it from getting scratched.
One really nifty feature of this pack is that there are pockets in the waiste belt too! And they're big enough to fit a rangefinder lens on each side.
Notice that there are elastric straps inside the belt pockets to keep things from spilling out while you're opening the pocket with the pack on.
There is an additional large internal pocket in the main compartment that will fit up to a 3L hydration bladder. The bag actually has two exit points for the hydration bladder hose and this can be fed through either the right or the left shoulder harness.
And lastly, some other nice features that you might find handy are:
- Compression straps that can be tightend on the fly while wearing the pack. As you empty your hydration pack, there will be more room in your bag and you can tighten the compression without having to take off your bag.
- Expandable outside mesh pocket that can fit a bike helmet
- Compression strap on the side to keep your gear from sloshing around and it can even serve to keep hiking poles or a small tripod in place. I tried putting in a 2-series Gitzo and it was way too big but if you have a 1-series Gitzo traveller tripod or smaller, it will fit without being top heavy.
- It is light at 1.5lbs. When empty, it can be made completely flat and takes up about as much room as a light fleece sweater which means you can stuff it into a suitcase and use it on location without having to worry about the bag taking up half your suitcase.
Some minor quibbles that I think would make the bag even better are the following:
- The sternum strap and skinny strap that attaches the two belt straps are fairly long but when tightened, they tend to just dangle around. It would be nice if there were some elastic bands clips that held onto the loose ends of the straps to keep it from getting caught on things.
- This bag is not water proof and although it is design to shed water in a light rain, it will get wet during a downpour. This means that you'll need to keep a bag cover around if you're out in places where you're expecting to get wet.
So there you have it, an amazing photographer friendly daypack that, with very minor modification, will be one of the most versatile camera bags on the market!