A great little backpack

I just took a trip to Bali, and decided that I needed a new backpack before I left. This was the result of two things. First, I wanted to keep my equipment to a minimum so I could be mobile and flexible. The second was that I had had experiences on past trips to India and Nepal where I felt slowed down by having to remove a pack from my back, put it on the ground, and then get a different lens to work with. Often, this meant I would miss a shot of a situation that was fleeting.

So I went to my local camera store, and started looking for a hybrid packpack, one that I could access without removing it from my body, but still had enough capacity to do the job. It needed to be light, since I would be out walking all day for two weeks, have good weather protection because of the heavy rains in Bali, and it had to have a small profile so I could navigate in tight environments.

I ended up buying the Lowe Orion AW, which is a convertible beltpack/backpack. The way it works is that there are two separate components, which attach to each other. One is a traditional beltpack, deep enough to handle a 70-200 lens, among others. The second part is a small backpack, which clips into the top side edges of the beltpack. Once that is done, you basically have a two compartment backpack.

The concept works quite well. I was able to put a speedlight, my rainjacket, a couple of energy bars and a headlamp in the backpack component, and put two of my17-40, 24-70 and 70-200 lenses in the beltpack. That way, I could walk around with one of the lenses attached to the camera in my hand at all times, and have the weight of everything carried by both my shoulders and hips. But in just a few seconds, I could unclip the backpack from the beltpack, rotate the beltpack around to the front of my body, and change lenses on the fly. It was a great solution for shooting on the move through temples, markets, and street scenes.

A side benefit was that if I did not want to carry equipment to dinner, I could leave the beltpack in my hotel room, and just take the backpack with my personal items.

We all look for different things when choosing how to carry our gear, and even that can change based on specific situations. In fact, I own five different backpacks to handle the range of work I do. But for this kind of working environment, I can highly recommend the Lowe Orion AW.