Ahhhhh…..The Great Salt Lake. It’s that little sliver of light at the bottom. A friend of mine told me that the sunsets in Utah are a product of both the dust from the Salt Flats to the west and the reflective qualities of the Great Salt Lake. After witnessing a few of these this summer, I would tend to agree!

Gear Update & Mini Review

My Think Tank Retrospective 10

This summer I was looking for a more discrete camera bag for travel, exploring cities, and photo-walking. I ended up picking up the Think Tank Retrospective 10. It has served me well now for several months. I just received word from them that they are running a special holiday promotion on all their retrospective bags so I thought I would share it with you. If you buy any of the Retrospective bags, you will get $20 back. If you use this link or my affiliate code on checkout (434) you get to choose from 1 of 11 free bags.

Here are my findings after a couple months of use.

• It is pretty discrete.
• I feel like it might be something Indiana Jones would use if he was into photography.
• It fits my iPad in the front pocket, so it is a viable travel companion.
• The shoulder strap is super comfortable.
• Although I don’t normally carry a flash with me, it has to dedicated internal pockets that can fit your flashes if need be.
• The ‘stuff’ organizer is really well thought out.
• I think it is cool that my bag has velcro silencers.
• The front pocket can easily hold my GoLite Gortex jacket and some snacks.
• Yes, you can put a bunch of stuff in this bag, and this is the 10. I can’t imagine what you could put in the 20 or the 30? That being said, be honest with yourself, just because you can fit it in doesn’t mean you are going to enjoy carrying it for a full day. No matter how comfortable the strap, more gear means more weight. More weight means less fun.
• Also, be aware this is a soft sided bag. It does a good job protecting gear from most stuff, but if you drop if off a building, there are no guarantees.
• Because it is a soft sided bag, it kind of collapses on itself a bit so you might end up digging around for stuff if you have it packed to the brim. But we don’t want to do that because more stuff equals more weight, and more weight equals less fun!

Here is a look at my ‘street/travel kit’. This is the kit I carry around when I’m out about exploring cities, photo walking, etc. I carry the second body for portraits. This is the kit I was using when I shot the image above.

If I’m only carrying a single body, but I want the best image quality/versatility I can manage, this is what I carry. All of it fits nicely inside and is pretty easy to work out of.

Need to be quiet? Just put it in stealth mode!