Choosing a camera bag

For anyone trying to find the best camera bag, my advice is forgetaboutit! There is no perfect, one bag to rule them all. I should know by now; I spent the last three weeks looking at dozens of YouTubes and visiting too many websites to count looking for the perfect bag, and my discovery, other than that I really like bags? There is no perfect bag and there is no one bag for everything.

The first bag I started out with, storing my new camera gear, was the Tenba DNA 13 messenger bag. The Tenba DNA 13 is a solid photographer’s messenger bag, with the ability to hold lots of gear in a smaller form factor than Tenba’s DNA 16 Pro. It held all of my gear and then some, right up until the point that I ordered the OM System 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 IS II telephoto zoom. With this, unfortunately, the bag wouldn’t do for a complete carry-all. So, I started searching for another bag, one that would absorb all of my gear, and hopefully have some room for extras.

As a result of all my YouTube watching, I decided to go for a backpack, as these bags typically are great for telephoto lenses and have lots of storage capacity. I went back to YouTube to search for best backpacks of 2025, and started watching more YouTubes. Two backpacks stood out: the PGYTech OnePro Focux 25L pack and the Summit-Creative Tenzing 25L zippered pack. I ended up buying the PGYTech backpack.

The PGYTech OnePro Focux bag is a very nice backpack, and I really did love it. It is constructed very well, is easily sizable, and huge. It lists at 25L, but the backpack seems noticeably larger than that, think 30-35L. It seems to want to fit DSLRs or mirrorless cameras with battery grips attached, huge cameras that otherwise might struggle with other bags. It seems perfect of a system built around either the Nikon Z-9, or Canon EOS R-1. I put all of my current camera gear in the backpack, and when I put on the pack, my gear seemed to shift around badly, especially my camera. Although it has velcro straps to secure gear in its respective cubby hole, the pack’s dividers are quite wide, leaving in my estimation about 3 inches of unusable space. This of course is great if you stack your lenses vertically rather than horizontally. In the end, although I really did love the bags construction and features - it has a space battery holder with indicators of whether the battery is charged or not - in the end it was simply way too big for me.

The bag that I did finally go with is the Shimoda Action X30 Women’s backpack with a large mirrorless core unit. Pics of the backpack below:

The women’s pack has special straps that s-curve at the chest, providing for a better fit for women. It’s a really comfortable fit, unique among photography backpack manufacturers. The Shimoda Action X30 is just a great pack, it contains all of my gear and then-some, and has an expandable opening on top to store even more stuff, like a rain jacket or hoodie. It comes with a raincover and a helmet holder. Although I haven’t taken the backpack out into the wild yet, I love it already. I feel the Shimoda Action X30 pack is the best photography backpack on the market currently.

Gearing up for bird photography

Today I received my first telephoto lens from Allen’s Camera in Pennsylvania, the one place that I make all of my major purchases. I purchased an OM System 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO Lens. It i compact, it is light (1.96 lbs), and it is mine! This will be one of my select birding lenses, perfect for the boardwalk at Magee Marsh for close-in warblers!

I will post photos here when I have the opportunity to take the lens out for a test-drive and hopefully photograph some birds.

I also pre-purchased the new OM System 100-400mm f/5.6-6.3 IS II zoom lens. I hope to get that towards the end of the month. With these lenses, I should be all set for birds!

Enjoying the sunshine

Yesterday, I enjoyed a beautiful weather day, one of few, and drove north to Geneva-on-the-Lake. I wanted to shoot some photos of the storefronts closed for winter. Here’s a few shots I got, including in Mesopotamia on the way back.

Playing around with macro

I recently picked up the OM System M.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens, and today I decided to play a bit with it on my Lego displays. Its been snowing outside for the better half of the day, and I just don’t feel like going outside, so… improvise! I also got to test out my 3LeggedThing Billy 2.0 Carbon Fiber Tripod, so it was a win-win!

The 60mm Macro is a really good macro lens. The 60mm distance, which in MFT format equates to a 120mm, allows you to capture your subject in macro without getting right on top of them, which you absolutely can do if you want that. There’s a limiting switch on the lens that lets you set the macro range, from 1:1 to 0.4 to infinity.

I used the 0.19 to infinity setting to capture photos of my Lego. The images get in so close you can see the dust on some of the figurines! (yeah, mini-vacuum time). Below are some of the images I took, all unedited. Maybe I should become a Lego photographer?

Busy Rebuilding My Portfolio

With my new OM-1 Mk II camera, I’m very busy rebuilding my portfolio and stock, taking as many photos as I can.

Although I have been taking photos for years, I don’t have many of my past shots because of computer changes and a lack of backup to an external hard drive. I went through three major changes in various Apple platforms over the years, and have lost pretty much the bulk of my work to these changes. One shift-over, a few years ago, I was in a bad place and simply said “f it,” and dumped all of my work. It is now a very painful memory for me, as I don’t have very important things, like my children’s pics growing up or visiting Disney World or other places. I’ve lost many great landscape shots I had taken over the years, and all of my modeling and musician pics. I never really cared about it all till now; I wish I had those images to go to and analyze to see how my photographic expertise grew. I even lost all of my birding photos from 2021-22.

I think of it a bit as leaving behind eras in my photographic lifespan, and now I’m starting a new one. I long to revisit old haunts, like Virginia barns and Civil War battlefields, the streets of Harper’s Ferry, Cape May, and especially the coast of Maine. So much history I have lost through my now-deleted photos. I think that, in some ways, it was an act of civil disobedience and also self-harm to a degree. But now I’m whole, and back in the game.

Franklin Park Conservatory

Yesterday I visited the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Columbus, and it was a great haven for photography. I saw many Hawaiian Orchids spread throughout the Conservatory. There was also the amazing Chihuly glass creations tucked in differing parts of the botanical garden displays. And, I got a preview of the Blooms & Butterflies exhibit, which officially opens on February 22nd. It was a great morning filled with lots of photographic opportunities. Below are some of the images I framed:

Finally we got a decent day today, sunny and not too cold. I took advantage of the nice weather to take little trip to Amish country - Berlin and Millersburg, Ohio. I saw a few buggies on the roads, but not too many today as it was still very cold this morning, a balmy 23 degrees out. Plus, I didn’t go down to Charm, which typically has decent buggy traffic, but rather just made quick trips and pix. I also visited friends in Bolivar, and took a side trip to Zoar to capture some of their great historical buildings there. It was a perfectly-lit afternoon.

So, while there’s not many captures, these are my first pix from the OM System OM-1 Mark II. I shot all captures in aperture priority, my favorite setting for playing with depth-of-field. I used Lightroom to do my edits and save the images, which will be a learning experience for me once again.

New Camera System

Wow, I didn’t realize that its been so long since I last wrote a blog post! I haven’t been doing much with photography, as I sold my camera last year. It had been sitting around and I had no interest in taking it out to photograph anything.

Having gone several months without a camera, to see how that would be, I’ve gone ahead and adopted a whole new camera system. I purchased a new OM System (formerly Olympus) OM-1 Mark II MFT or Micro Four-Thirds format camera. The camera uses a crop sensor that turns lenses into an effect 2X focal length due to the cropping; in other words, a 12-40mm lens would equate to a 24-80mm lens. This is huge for photographing wildlife, as because of the factor, the lenses are able to be made smaller, and less weighty. Also, a great wildlife lens like the 150-600mm lens is now effectively 1200mm, a mighty reach. Add to that a teleconverter and you’re at a whopping 2400mm!

My plans are to focus on wildlife, landscape and architecture shoots. I am hoping to get a good zoom lens for this spring’s Biggest Week in American Birding festival, held on western Lake Erie in May.

This is a short update for now, but there will be more in the future and especially once I get back into the groove again.

My new daily carry bag

I’m talking about Think Tank Photo’s Retrospective 5 V2.0 shoulder bag. This bag does everything for me. This bag holds everything for me.

As a woman, it’s very difficult to find a good camera bag that does it all, while also looking stylish. I’ve looked over all of the usual suspects, including Peak Design, Jil-E, ONA, LowePro, Domke, Jo Totes, Kelly Moore, and F-Stop Gear, and have found them lacking in one way or another. I’ve found that a lot sacrifice style over substance, and while style is important to me, there are other more important factors to consider.

The key factor in choosing a camera bag is functionality - it must hold everything for me: camera, a Leica Q2; accessories such as extra batteries, memory cards, maybe a flash when I pick one up, and; personal items such as my wallet, keys, pens, eyeglasses, iPhone. The Retrospective 5 V2.0 does this in spades, with all of its pockets and main compartment room. Its 9.5” W x 7.8” H x 4.9” D internal dimensions hold lots of stuff in a space that is neither too small nor too large, but just right for the female photographer.

There are so many pockets to store your stuff in this bag. The front of the bag, as seen above, has a velcro-locked front pocket, which opens to a nice space to store things like extra batteries or even makeup, depending on what you are carrying. Within this big pocket is a zippered storage pocket where you can even put more items. The main compartment has a velcro-locked space that can carry a 9-inch tablet, notebook or other items. On the right side of the bag, there is even a beverage bottle holder.

The bag itself overall I feel is very stylish and has a relatively small form factor. The bag is made of sand-washed cotton canvas that has a durable water-repellant and polyurethane coating, and is very soft and formable. The exterior dimensions are 10”W by 8.5”H by 6”D, and it weighs in at 2 lbs. The bag is available in Pinestone - my bag’s color - or in black. The bag retails for $159.75, and in my opinion, is worth every penny!

Think Tank Photo does have several sizes in their Retrospective line, in addition to a full line of various camera bags, cases and numerous accessories to carry just about anything, Check them out at www.thinktankphoto.com. I was not reimbursed for this review.

National Packard Museum

Today I ventured to the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio. While there were many beautiful cars there, the cream-colored one below was by far my favorite, and the best-in-show. It was in immaculate condition and a beautiful representative of the Packard automobile.