I decided to write this review since I have this bag for more than 7 months now and have been using it a lot. Before I bought it, like most of us do, I searched the net for reviews and thought I’ve got it completely figured out. I was sure back then that this bag is exactly what I need. And now, after months of experience with it I would like to share my conclusions and hope they would help some of you to make the right decision.

Buying Kata 3n1 (20) bag my requirements were:

1. I like to hike a lot, mostly one-day hikes, and I always want my camera with me. So I needed my photo bag to sit comfortable on my back.

2. Usually I take three lenses on a hike with me, all of them being Canon lenses: EF-S 10-22, EF24-70 2.8L, and EF70-300 f4-5.6. I needed my backpack to have room for these lenses, their hoods, 40D camera body, two polarizing filters and some additional stuff.

3. All the equipment should be properly stored but easily accessed when I need it.

4. Sometimes I take a tripod with me.

5. I also wanted a very durable bag that would provide a proper protection for everything I put in it since I am not so gentle with my equipment (except lenses of course!!!).

So did Kata 3n1 20 bag do the job?

Let’s go over each requirement and see:

1. This bag has very versatile shoulder straps. You can unclip each strap at its base and clip it to the other side making it possible to carry the backpack in three different positions: the usual backpack position, the sling position, and the x-position.

I tried all of them during my hikes and here are my conclusions:

The usual backpack position is the most comfortable one. I could hike for hours on rough terrain with backpack sitting comfortably on my back. The X-position is not very comfortable. I couldn’t walk long distances using it because x-shaped straps started pressing on my neck and shoulders and I had to pull them to the sides with my hands. Also the sling position, which is very convenient when you want to quickly get your camera, is not very comfortable. I couldn’t hike long distances using this position – the weight on a single shoulder (and neck) was too big. I think that if your gear doesn’t weight as much as mine, then you could use the sling position, but since I had to carry pretty big weight I didn’t find it useful.

2. I have enough room for all the equipment described above and I even have some free space left. So this requirement was fully satisfied.

3. But having this equipment organized conveniently is whole another story. The easiest thing is to get the camera with attached lens out of the side opening (the bag has openings from both sides so you can choose which side you want to use). But when you want to reach other lenses, it is not so easy. You have two options: a. To try and pull the lenses through the side opening and this is pure hell. And b. To take the backpack off your shoulders, put it on the ground (or table, or something), open the central compartment and take out what you need. Even the second option is not as easy as it seems since the central compartment can’t be fully opened – you can see it from the photo:

So when I put a lens in the far end of the bag then it won’t come out as easily as I would like it to. I have to say that the top compartment is very good. I like the way it opens and although it seems pretty small, I manage to put there quite a lot of stuff. I also like the handle on top. Two small side pockets on the outside are good for ipod, filters and cleaning cloths.

4. There is nothing on this bag that allows to attach a tripod, and this is too bad. If it had only a little something that I could use to securely attach a lightweight tripod, I would be a much happier man

5. This bag is very and I mean VERY durable. Its build quality is excellent. Much thought was put in all the weak elements, and in this bag they are very strong. All the gear is perfectly protected inside the bag, and it also has a rain cover. I took it on several hikes during rain and all the equipment stayed dry. I couldn’t say enough good things about the materials and the build of this bag and I am not going easy on it when I use it!

Conclusion

Pros:

• Excellent build quality.
• Comfortable when carrying it as a usual backpack.
• Very convenient side openings.
• Great top compartment.
• Good equipment protection.

Cons:

• The main compartment can’t be fully opened, which makes it difficult to access gear.
• If your equipment is heavy, then you can only use this bag as a backpack and not as sling.
• Impossible to attach tripod.

All that said, I am still using this bag and probably will use it for a while. If you found this review to be helpful, consider supporting my site by buying the Kata 3N1 20 backpack through my affiliate link.

After publishing this article as you can see from the comment below, I was contacted by Doug Feldner, the product manager for the Kata line in the US. He told me something very interesting! There is a tripod holder for the Kata 3n1 series! When I try it I sure will write a few lines about it here.

You can read my review on the tripod holder for the Kata 3n1 series here.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Many advanced amateur photographers are familiar with notion of f-stops and shutter speeds, and also know that there are many different combinations of f-stop+shutter speed that allow for the same amount of light to hit the sensor of the camera (or the film). But there is a catch involved in it that I would like to focus your attention on in this article.

I will say it right away that for this article to be of any use to you, you have to know what is f-stop, shutter speed, and exposure. But even that said I’ll start with a little theory, which may serve just as reminder for most of the readers (myself included) but for beginner photographers it might be even something they didn’t know before.

There are many different combinations of f-stop and shutter speed that represent the same exposure, so for the same lighting conditions you can choose for example f/11 with 1/15s for correct exposure, but you can also choose f/2 with 1/500 for exactly the same exposure. Of course there are substantial differences between these two settings, which you also have to take under consideration, but both of them allow for the same exposure.

So what exactly are the combinations of f-stop and shutter speed that result in the same exposure?

The answer is pretty simple, but with a little twist. First – the answer. There are 9 full f-stops, and also 9 common shutter speeds (actually there are few more, but here I’ll concentrate on these). So if your correct exposure consists from a certain f-stop and a certain shutter speed from these nine, then to receive exactly the same exposure with different f-stop and shutter speed combination you’ll have, for example, to set one f-stop above your current one, and one shutter speed below your current one, thus you will close your aperture so that less light will hit the sensor, but at the same time you’ll prolong the time that the sensor is exposed, so eventually the same amount of light will hit the sensor. This way you can continue changing the f-stop/shutter speed combinations but still have the same exposure.

And now the twist:

In the modern cameras you can actually set more f-stops and shutter speed than these 9. Between the full f-stops there are now intermediate f-stops, and this fact confused me because now when I changed to the next f-stop I didn’t know whether it was a full one or an intermediate, same thing being with shutter speeds. So having modern digital camera denied me this knowledge of getting the same exposure due to having intermediate settings.

What are original full f-stops and shutter speeds are then? Well, here they are for your (and mine) convenience:

f-stops: f/1.4  f/2 f/2.8  f/4  f/5.6  f/8  f/11  f/16  f/22

shutter speeds: 1/1000s  1/500s  1/250s  1/125s  1/60s  1/30s  1/15s  1/8s  1/4s

And the f-stop@shutter speed combinations that will result in same exposure are:

f/22@1/4  f/16@1/8  f/11@1/15  f/8@1/30  f/5.6@1/60  f/4@1/125  f/2.8@1/250  f/2@1/500  f/1.4@1/1000

Just to make it more clear – if you set your camera to automatic mode, take a shot and see that it used f5.6 f-stop with 1/60s shutter speed, you then can switch to manual mode and set f/4 with 1/125s and also have properly exposed photograph. Of course that by changing from f/5.6 to f/4 you reduced your depth of focus, and also shutter speed of 1/125s will make it harder to create blurring effect, but about these implications of different f-stops and shutter speeds I will write in another article. And until then – take care!

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Recently I was browsing some photos of a photographer I liked and saw this beautiful photo of waterfall with smooth water flowing between the rocks. Then in the comments below I saw a question from someone asking how to make this “smooth water” effect. There was no answer in the comments.

Though I think that many even beginner photographers know answer to this question I decided to write here a short explanation on the subject and also provide additional useful info that I learned while trying to achieve this effect.

The “Smooth Water” effect

The effect of smooth water is achieved by using long exposure. The longer you set the exposure (starting with about 1/4s) the smoother the water will be. It happens because water doesn’t stay still like the surrounding rocks, but constantly flows, so during all that time that your shutter is open, the water slightly “changes” its appearance many times, which results in the smooth water effect. But it is not always simple to achieve this effect:

First of all you absolutely need a tripod. You need everything else besides water to remain sharp, but if you will hand-hold your camera and shoot with long exposure setting, everything will be blurred due to camera shake. If you don’t have a tripod you can try placing your camera on a rock (or anything that doesn’t move) and composing your shot from there, though it won’t give you the freedom of the tripod.

Additional problem that can be a serious one – if you are shooting on bright sunny day, there may be too much light for long exposure that will result in burned photos. So you are stuck with either not smooth water or a burned photograph. What can you do in such situation?

• First – check your ISO settings and make sure that you are on the lowest ISO possible in your camera.

• Second try closing the aperture as much as possible – lets say f22 (maybe less if you see that its enough).

• Third (not always an option) wait for some clouds to block the sun.

If nothing helps then, in order to achieve the smooth water effect you will have to put filter on your lens to reduce the amount of light reaching the sensor. There are two types of filters that I use: Neutral Density (ND) filters and Polarizing filter.

Neutral Density filters have different densities and they can reduce the amount of light entering the camera by 1, 2, or 3 stops. By using them you’ll actually make a bright day darker. The combination of ND filter, small aperture, and low ISO should do the job.

Polarizing filter (or simply polarizer) is widely used in Landscape photography. There is more to polarizer but now what matters is that this filter reduces the amount of light entering the camera by about 1.5 stops, thus acting like ND filter in this aspect. If the only filter you have is polarizer then put it on if see if this would be enough light reduction to use long exposure.
You can find more useful info about polarizer at Great Landscape Photography

So as you can see though the explanation of “smooth water” effect is pretty simple, it is not always easy (or even possible) to achieve without proper tools.

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I learned the following tips from two professional photographers I happen to know. These are not the most common tips that any amateur receives like “Try shooting the same frame with different exposures and see what works best” or “To freeze action use fast shutter speed”. These tips are more profound and “rare” as I call them, having more meaning than I can actually explain here, so you will have to rethink for yourself some of them. And one more thing – some of them can be achieved only with SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera.

1. When looking through the viewfinder “scan” with your eye the whole frame.

Human eye is seeing the sharpest only the object that it looks at. All other objects are not in perfect focus. But camera sees all the things that are in the same plane in the same sharpness, and if your aperture fairly small then many more planes will get sharp. So when taking the shot you have to be aware of other “sharp” objects that will be visible in the final photo.

• One way to do this “scan” is to first focus with AF (auto focus) on what you want, and then rotate the manual focus ring just a little bit. It will make the whole frame a little blurred. When everything is blurred your eye will automatically scan the whole frame for something sharp, thus going over the whole frame.
• Another way is just to stare into the view finder for a few seconds, not trying to focus on anything specific. This is something that takes a little practice to master.

2. Use manual focus override to adjust focus to what you need.

Sometimes you need to control the DOF (Depth Of Field) to achieve the desired result. First you focus on your main subject using auto focus, and then while the shutter release button is half-pressed you turn the manual focus override ring to adjust the focus to what you need. Have in mind though that manual focus override is not featured in all lenses. There are cheaper lenses that can work only in automatic or manual mode but not both simultaneously.

3. Initially compose the photo for cropping or adjustments.

Many amateur photographers just shoot the photo and then when they open it in photo-processing software (such as Picasa, Lightroom, Photoshop, ACDSee etc.), and only then, they start thinking what they can do to improve it. Maybe crop it like this? Maybe emphasize a little more shadows? Try to think about these things (especially the crop) before pressing the shutter-release button.  It will make it much easier to perform cropping and other adjustments later. You will also be forced to THINK before you shoot.

4. During the shoot of an event – shoot on manual.

When you are shooting events that happen fast, you can’t afford to mess with camera controls. You can miss the shot of the day that way. So what you can do is: set your camera to aperture priority mode, and choose the desired aperture. Then half press the shutter-release button and on the screen (or inside the viewfinder) you will see the suggested shutter speed. Take a few photos and see if you like what you get (in terms of exposure), if not adjust exposure compensation. After you are satisfied, switch to manual and set the same values of shutter and aperture. From now on shoot on manual during the whole event with the same settings, unless there are drastic changes of light in the scene. I realize that this is kind of “half-tip” and many professional photographers are working only in manual changing between f-stops and exposure automatically to get the best results. But here I am talking about amateurs, like myself, who are not just yet there.

5.Don’t look at the back LCD screen after each photo.

Actually this tip is pretty controversial, but I’ll stick with it. Not looking at the LCD display after taking each shot makes you THINK more before each shot, and also leaves a room for anticipation towards the final images. This is a good exercise, and while it might not be a good idea during an important shoot, I advise to do it wholeheartedly during your everyday shooting. Think of it, if you have this habit of looking at your back screen after each photo, and you are in a scene where everything happens fast, you just might miss an interesting shot while looking at the LCD display.

6. Don’t just convert to b&w – shoot with intention for b&w.

Instead of going over your photographs after a shoot and thinking “Well, this photo might look good in B&W, lets try to convert it!” Shoot the photographs with B&W in mind, think B&W. When shooting B&W, highlights and shadows have more importance, and also other artistic aspects of the photo (such as facial expressions, hand gestures, etc.) stand out more in B&W, because you don’t have the “distraction” of the color. When shooting with B&W in mind you pay more attention to tones (light/dark) than to colors.

7.When shooting people in low light take spot light metering from their skin.

In difficult light conditions, particularly in low light, when using center-weighted average metering most of the chances that you will over-expose your photo. So it would be better to switch to spot metering and take the measure from the skin of the person you are about to shoot. If for some reason it is impossible, then take the measurement from the palm of your hand while placing it in similar lighting.

8. When shooting with slow shutter speeds hand-held, don’t release the shutter button.

When you shoot with slow shutter speed, you have to do everything in your power to reduce the camera shake, so in addition to holding it steady, leaning against the wall etc., when you press the shutter button, don’t press and release it straight away, but press it smoothly leaving your finger on it for a while after you hear the shutter sound. This little trick can improve greatly the outcome. In many ways shooting photos with slow shutter speed is like sniper-shooting a rifle – most of the actions are the same: for example it helps to take a deep breath in, then breath out, and then press the shutter-release.

Well, I hope you’ll find these tips useful and would really like to hear your thoughts about them. I probably will write more on some of these tips in my future articles.

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