Earlier this year, I purchased Andy Bigg’s new lightweight Gura Gear bag, given it’s about 3 pounds lighter (almost half the weight) of my old Lowe Pro bag. Although I took it to the Falklands, I’ve held off writing about it because I wanted to wait until after my Africa trip when I had a chance to use the bag as intended on a safari. My overall sentiment is that despite a few shortcomings, this is an excellent bag, and I look forward to seeing what other bags Andy and Co produce!
Two Gentoo penguins check out the Gura Gear bar
One thing that’s immediately different from my LowePro is that this bag has a split design. Rather than having an entire top flap that opens revealing one big compartment, the bag is split vertically down the middle, and each side opens separately. It took me a few tries to figure out how I wanted to place everything in my bag, but I’m happy with my final setup, which has 2 1-series bodies and a long lens (a 400mm DO) on one side, and my other lenses, flash, and filters on the other side. Sadly the mesh pockets are a little too small for the Singh-Ray cases, and I needed to store them vertically in the bag.
The point of the split design is that you can store two fully-assembled cameras, one on each side, and get them out quickly on the safari jeep. In practice, I found that I didn’t want to readjust the multiple dividers I had setup for my lens/filter side of the bag, but I still had one side that I could quickly stash and retrieve a camera from, which is similar to what I did with my old LowePro (I had space in the center for a camera and lens).
One side of my Kiboko
My main complaint with the split design is that when I have a camera and long lens out but am carrying the bag on my back, the bag is weighted oddly and gets painful to carry after a while. Edit Jan 20, 2010: I finally discovered the trick to fitting a 500mm lens into the bag. Another small gripe is that I found the 500mm lens only fits if the front element’s at the bottom of the bag. If I want to put a camera body at the bottom, the lens doesn’t fit. Fortunately, a 400mm lens fits just fine above a body.
Both while trying to fit the 500mm lens in and while working in the field with gloves on, I quickly came to realize that my absolute favorite feature of the bag is its high-quality zippers. They’re easy to open and close and quite solidly built. The strap system is also well-designed (although still a tad too large if you have a shorter torso), especially given how light the bag is. And let me tell you, it’s nice to have a light bag!
Of course the lightness also means it’s not very padded, and I found it useful to place an extra divider at the bottom of the bag on each side so that when it’s upright (which is how it’s usually sitting), there’s extra protection.
If you’re hiking, there’s also an included rain shield, which works quite well, although I wish it had a snap of some sort instead of just tight elastic, so that I felt more sure it wasn’t going to accidentally come off.
In reality, these gripes are small, and for its lightness and functional design, as well as its looks, I definitely recommend giving this bag a try!
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