Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
Thought I would start a thread on this so easy to search later. Let me start by saying I am a big fan of Think Tank bags and given my real sickness for bags its no wonder when I look in my closet I have at least 6 Think Tank bags. Seems like most of us have varied systems and varied setups for backups and different formats it leads to a bag disease which i have no cure for. I know myself with 3 different systems it's really a nightmare given whatever I am going to shoot to have the correct and most efficient bag. Man did that sound like i was preaching to my wife on justification of my bag sickness. LOL
So once again I am out there figuring out what works the best for me and my Tech cam kit. Lets start with the Think Tank Glass Taxi which for all intentions was designed for large fast 35mm glass like a 500 F4 lens and such. You will see many sports shooters with these bags holding there heavy investment in fast glass in them. Now looking at the options out there and trying to get a bag that will hold a Cambo AE model with back and lens. This could also be said for Alpa and Arca as well but you wind up with almost a square block in dimension to deal with. In my case my Cambo is 7 inches tall, 7 inches wide and 6.5 inches fromt my back to the front of my 60mm lens. SQUARE. Yea and every Alpa, Cambo and Arca shooter is looking at basically the same thing and the bad news no one designs bags as SQUARE and worse some are even bigger than the Cambo by a good amount as well. So this makes it a tough choice to find a bag that has the correct room for a SQUARE and enough for extra lenses and all the stuff we carry.So digging around on the TT site I was looking at the Glass Taxi for awhile now and decided to get one and one reason was the inside dimensions ID: 8.3” W x 16.3” H x 8” D (21.1 x 41.4 x 20.3 cm) which sounded like it would fit my setup quite well. So lets see with images how this all worked out.
Now i had to really move all the dividers around and get them where i thought would work. I'm still refining this a little as I go so its not a 100 percent settled on but here goes. Here is basically my complete kit here.
As you can see i have 3 lenses and lots of accessories as many folks do as well. I have in lenses all Schneiders 35 XL , 60 XL TS lens and a 90mm all in Cambo mounts.
Now in this shot this is my basic reconfiguration of the inserts. I'm still working on this but it does create some slots along the camera that hold flat useful items as you can see in the next two images.
Now moving to the front 4 slots I can put a 90mm in one slot Either the 35 or 60 in another and the from t two slots hold a lot of junk or even a 4th lens.
Now lets move back to the camera, lens and back section. I left the bridge pad in to support the lens so it does not flop around when inserting the camera in. Also going in this direction the Phase back is totally protected by being in the middle of the bag ( kids and carseats rule)
Also in the lid there is a web carrier that can hold extra gear . I keep my lens shade attachment in here but the nice thing is when closed it is outside the area of the camera so it does not hit the cambo in anyway.
Now here is it all packed up and ready to go
Also I keep my LCC card on one or two of the external pockets for easy access. Now the only bad news like any other backpack is you need to lay it on the ground at least to get the camera out. The way i have it setup I can actually zipper half way without laying on the ground to get to the lenses if i want and the lid never will touch the ground which is the good news. Also I can put this in with either the 60mm on the cambo or 35mm which keeps me from changing either one of those lenses out for a shorter lens to fit in. The 90 I certainly have to replace for sure. But most times we have our wide or mid focal length on anyway so it should not be a big deal in the field. Admittedly I like my bags small and compact to carry around so i maybe considered a just fits kind of shooter bag carrying gear slut. :ROTFL::ROTFL::ROTFL:
So once again I am out there figuring out what works the best for me and my Tech cam kit. Lets start with the Think Tank Glass Taxi which for all intentions was designed for large fast 35mm glass like a 500 F4 lens and such. You will see many sports shooters with these bags holding there heavy investment in fast glass in them. Now looking at the options out there and trying to get a bag that will hold a Cambo AE model with back and lens. This could also be said for Alpa and Arca as well but you wind up with almost a square block in dimension to deal with. In my case my Cambo is 7 inches tall, 7 inches wide and 6.5 inches fromt my back to the front of my 60mm lens. SQUARE. Yea and every Alpa, Cambo and Arca shooter is looking at basically the same thing and the bad news no one designs bags as SQUARE and worse some are even bigger than the Cambo by a good amount as well. So this makes it a tough choice to find a bag that has the correct room for a SQUARE and enough for extra lenses and all the stuff we carry.So digging around on the TT site I was looking at the Glass Taxi for awhile now and decided to get one and one reason was the inside dimensions ID: 8.3” W x 16.3” H x 8” D (21.1 x 41.4 x 20.3 cm) which sounded like it would fit my setup quite well. So lets see with images how this all worked out.
Now i had to really move all the dividers around and get them where i thought would work. I'm still refining this a little as I go so its not a 100 percent settled on but here goes. Here is basically my complete kit here.
As you can see i have 3 lenses and lots of accessories as many folks do as well. I have in lenses all Schneiders 35 XL , 60 XL TS lens and a 90mm all in Cambo mounts.
Now in this shot this is my basic reconfiguration of the inserts. I'm still working on this but it does create some slots along the camera that hold flat useful items as you can see in the next two images.
Now moving to the front 4 slots I can put a 90mm in one slot Either the 35 or 60 in another and the from t two slots hold a lot of junk or even a 4th lens.
Now lets move back to the camera, lens and back section. I left the bridge pad in to support the lens so it does not flop around when inserting the camera in. Also going in this direction the Phase back is totally protected by being in the middle of the bag ( kids and carseats rule)
Also in the lid there is a web carrier that can hold extra gear . I keep my lens shade attachment in here but the nice thing is when closed it is outside the area of the camera so it does not hit the cambo in anyway.
Now here is it all packed up and ready to go
Also I keep my LCC card on one or two of the external pockets for easy access. Now the only bad news like any other backpack is you need to lay it on the ground at least to get the camera out. The way i have it setup I can actually zipper half way without laying on the ground to get to the lenses if i want and the lid never will touch the ground which is the good news. Also I can put this in with either the 60mm on the cambo or 35mm which keeps me from changing either one of those lenses out for a shorter lens to fit in. The 90 I certainly have to replace for sure. But most times we have our wide or mid focal length on anyway so it should not be a big deal in the field. Admittedly I like my bags small and compact to carry around so i maybe considered a just fits kind of shooter bag carrying gear slut. :ROTFL::ROTFL::ROTFL: