As I promised in the article about my trip to Switzerland, I am writing a detailed review on a photo backpack, which I took with me on that trip. It is a “Compurover” from Lowepro. When I was looking for a photo backpack on the net, I had trouble to find good reviews made by people who were actually using the product rather than just going over its features. I also had trouble finding detailed photographs of products. On the manufacturer’s sites there is usually only one or two photos of each product, which is absolutely wasn’t enough for me to get an idea about them.

So I had to actually go to various shops and check out different backpacks and spend quite a lot of time on it. Now, after finding the product that was the closest match to my demands, and using it for a while I decided to write a detailed review of this photo backpack including my own insights and conclusions based on real experience and heavy duty use.

I will start with what were my demands from a photo backpack.

We both – me and my life partner Ira like to hike. We love nature and try to spend as much time as we can outdoors. And obviously I love photography so taking my photo gear with me is never a question. The only question is what gear I am going to take with me and how I will be carrying it. Along these lines my demands from a photo backpack were the following:

1. It has to have enough padded space for all the photo gear I am taking with me outdoors.

2. It has to have an additional compartment for other hiking related gear (clothes, food, etc.).

3. It has to have a good carrying system, to sit comfortably on my back and waist, and wisely distribute the weight across my body.

4. It has to have a tripod holder.

5. It has to have a place for hydration system.

6. It has to have small, and preferably external pockets for all the little things (filters, cleaning cloth etc.).

7. It has to have a rain cover (very important).

Pretty big list huh? I worked hard to find a bag to fulfill all this, and I can’t say that I found a perfect backpack, but I came close.

The biggest problem that I encountered was that most of the professional photo backpacks don’t have enough room for other than photo gear. So I found many great backpacks, with good carrying system, but with no place for other stuff. It still puzzles me – if photographer goes out on a long day of shooting, with tons of gear, doesn’t he need to carry also some personal stuff? I need.

And now to the actual review.

In the two photos below you can see the “Compurover” front and back. It is pretty big backpack, made from top quality materials. It has a comfortable (at least for me) carrying system. During my trip I was walking for about 10 hours (!) a day with it on my back and feeling very comfortable. The waist belt is great – it is wide and well padded, so are shoulder straps. You can also remove the waist belt for drying/cleaning purposes.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

The bottom compartment is for photo gear. It is padded like any other photo bag, and you can also change its configuration to match your photo equipment. It was big enough for me. In this compartment I could carry the following equipment:

Body: Canon 40D

Lenses: Canon 24-70mm f2.8L, Canon 70-200mm f4L, Canon 100mm macro f2.8L, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.6

Flash: Canon 430EX

And there was still room left for one additional small lens such as Canon 28-105 f3.5-4.5

This compartment closes with a zipper and a security lock. When you open it, it slides out in an angle giving you a comfortable access to the equipment. One thing to notice – zipper is somewhat hard to zip/unzip at the corners.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

The tripod holder. When not in use it is folded upward (you can see it on the front view of the backpack above). When needed you unfold it downwards, and put a tripod in it as shown below. Lowepro’s original idea was that you put your tripod under the bungee mesh and use two additional bungee cords (which come with the bag) to secure the tripod at the top and bottom. I found that to be too inconvenient, so what I did was to remove the two bungee cords from top and bottom ( you can’t see them on any of my photos) and only on the top I put a Velcro strap. I put the tripod in the tripod holder without putting it under the bungee mesh, and secure it on the top with a Velcro strap. For me it was enough to securely carry my large tripod.

By the way if you have a small tripod, you can carry it on the side of the backpack putting its legs in the side mesh pocket and securing it with the side strap.

There is also a pretty spacious pocket, which I use to carry my polarizers as you can see on the photo below.

The downside to this tripod holder is that in order to access your photo gear you have to remove the tripod first.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Additional pockets. “Compurover” has two small zipped pockets on the front, which I use to carry cleaning stuff, micro leatherman, and filters. Pretty convenient. It also has mesh pockets on both sides.

Laptop compartment. The access to the laptop compartment is from the side, so that you won’t have to take out all your gear before getting to the laptop, which is especially convenient when you are passing airport security. But as you probably noticed, in my demands there was no need to carry a laptop. Actually the last thing I want with me on the outdoor hike is an additional 2-3 kilos of dead weight. Do you?

But here is my big breakthrough! I found this compartment to be very useful. Almost indispensable. I use it for my 3 liter hydration system! I put it inside, close the zipper almost all the way up and pull the hose from the top to the shoulder strap.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Top compartment for other stuff. You can see it on the left photo below. Actually it is pretty spacious. Unfortunately I didn’t show it in this photo. I could put quite a lot of stuff in this compartment such as rain coat, sandwiches, utility knife, and more. As you can see, inside the top compartment there is a zipped pocket and another divider. There is also a memory card holder there. You can see it in more detail in the photo on the right.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

In addition, with the bag comes this small pouch, which I found very convenient to carry spare batteries, cables and stuff.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

The one thing that I didn’t show in the photographs is the rain cover. It has its own pocket at the bottom of the bag.

Additional important little thing is that on the shoulder straps there are two plastic rings (one on each side). If I want to hike with my hands free (for trekking poles for example), but I also want my camera to be ready any minute, I hang it on these two plastic rings instead of hanging it on my neck. And when your camera is as heavy as mine it is very important.

Summary

Conclusion

I am happy with this backpack, and most of the cons are not an issue for me. The only thing for me that is left to see is whether this backpack will hold through the years.

Comments are welcome as always, and if you find this review useful I would also like to hear about it.

Till the next time,

Take care!

Greg.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Good day everybody! It has been a while since my last post. I had some pretty cardinal changes in my personal life, and was so caught up that couldn’t free my mind to write anything. But I continued to take photos and have some new stuff to share.

In addition to the changes, during this time me and Ira also went on an 8 day trip mainly to Switzerland but with short, 2 day stop in Prague. Actually one out of these two days we weren’t in Prague but in a small village named Černošice. It is located about 20 minutes by train from Prague, and it is so beautiful!

Černošice lies on the Berounka river, so we stepped off the train and went to the river right away. There is a nice walking trail along the river, and in the photos below you can see some of the views that we saw while walking there.

I saw these naked trees on the shore and their beautiful reflections in the water. I wanted to photograph them but thought that only the trees with their reflections were not enough to make interesting photograph, so I was looking for an additional element for my photograph. These red tulips were it.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

The photograph above was not enough for me and I was looking for additional ways to photograph these trees and their reflections and as a result I got the photo below. The additional element was the tree branch from the left. As you can assume I have much more photos of these trees in my collection, but I chose these two to show here because I think they are most successful composition-wise.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

While walking, I saw this horse’s hoof fungus. Well, it is not an unusual sight, at least not in Europe, but I just got this idea to photograph it, but as always I looked for somewhat different way of doing it. I decided to use a wide angle lens to emphasize its form and at the same time to hint about where it grows.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

When I took the photo below I was almost certain that it won’t be something I’d share. The sun was harsh creating a very high contrast between the sky and the earth, but the clouds looked so interesting that I couldn’t resist giving it a try. And I am glad I did! I like this photo because it is pretty simple, but at the same time it conveys movement and a feel of space.
Actually this photo didn’t look exactly like this when I opened it in Lightroom. The lower half of it was almost completely dark. But here comes the magic of shooting raw – using the “fill light” slider I was able to recover many details. In general, I use the “fill light” adjustment slider when I am forced to shoot in harsh afternoon light, and there are some strong shadows. The fill light adjustment helps make these shadows much less disturbing.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Next photo is pretty ordinary, I mean there are many photos like it out there, but I still liked it for being so bright, happy, and colorful, and couldn’t resist sharing it.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

I am not presenting here photos I made in Prague, since not long ago I had a more substantial trip to Prague and already posted photos from it. You can find my articles about Prague here and here.

After short stop in Prague we continued to our main destination – Switzerland. I always wanted to see whether this country is as beautiful as photographs show. Believe me – it is!

Our first destination was small town named Grindelwald. It is located in a very beautiful and mountainous area, which was exactly what we wanted. We camped in Grindelwald and went for a long hikes up the mountains from there. Since late April is still pretty cold, there weren’t much tourists (the ski season was over, and the summer hiking season didn’t begin yet), and we mostly hiked alone.

In the photographs below I will show some of the stunning views we saw on our hikes.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

I was looking for interesting shapes, patterns and angles to create interesting photographs, that would stand out. Whether I succeeded or not is for you to decide.

On one of our hikes we went so high up the mountains that we reached areas where snow didn’t melt yet and the wooden houses, which are restaurants and resorts in the summer, were completely covered with snow! There is one catch in photographing snow under bright sunlight (just in case that you are not familiar with it) – because the snow is so white it reflects the light very good, and the light meter in the camera perceives the scene to be very bright thus underexposing the photograph. So you have to set your exposure compensation to about +1 stop. It is not an exact science so just try and see for yourself.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

After two days in Grindelwald area we went to another area near town named Hintergoldingen, also with mountains but they were lower so there was almost no snow there. The next photo is from that area. The wast green fields are breathtaking! At the end of this article I will put some more photos from here.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

And finally on our last day, on the way to the Zurich airport, we stopped in Rapperswill – a small town located near Zurich lake. This tree caught my attention as light was hitting its leaves making them shine beautifully.

Photograph by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

I also tried to capture the slow pace of this place, where locals and tourists relax and don’t hurry anywhere.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Photographs by Greg Brave. Click on the photo to enlarge.

We had a great time on our trip and I hope I succeeded in showing it in my photographs. I bought a backpack for my photographic equipment especially for this trip, it was a “CompuRover” from Lowepro. I was very satisfied with it and I am planning to write a detailed review on it in the near future, so stay tuned if you are interested!

This is it for now, and until next time take care!

Greg.

Popularity: 5% [?]