dabhand16
Pixalo Crew
Registered: June 2006
Location: Dunstable Bedfordshire UK
Posts: 24108
|
|
Review Date: Mon January 9, 2012
|
Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: £41.50
| Rating: 9
|
|
Pros:
|
Fast Access, Compact, Good Capacity
|
|
Cons:
|
None for me.
|
|
Lowepro Stealth Reporter 400AW
I’ve got a few bags now. Silkstone was right – horses for courses! I’ve got a small Lowepro Rezo 140AW for my old D70s and 18-70 kit lens, a Lowepro Nova 170AW for the D300 + the Nikkor 18-200vr that is my usual holiday kit and a Lowepro Mini Trekker AW backpack for when I’m going to be doing a lot of walking. My main bag is the Tamrac Pro System 12. I originally bought this bag to be able to carry two cameras, but it is used mostly with a single body. It now serves as both a bag and kit store. Snag is that I then tend to carry a lot of kit that will not be used and the weight at between 10 and 12 kilos is just silly!
The Tamrac was also frustrating in that if you wanted to use the handle on the lid rather than the shoulder strap, you had to have the four plastic clips on the lid done up to feed the loading into the body of the bag, and undoing and doing them up was a bit fiddly and time consuming. Leaving the lid undone means that you have to use the shoulder strap, not always convenient. So for a while I’ve been on the lookout for a smaller bag that would accommodate just the kit that I’d need for any given situation and have easier access.
When I go to my camera club in London my train takes me to Euston, and that is five minutes walk from The Flash Centre in one direction and Calumet in the other. I usually spend some time in either of these establishments on the way in. Calumet has a decent display of bags and cases and I found the Lowepro Stealth Reporter 550AW. This was a nice bag and could take a laptop as well as a lot of kit, but it was not a lot smaller than my Tamrac. Looking at the listings on the display there were other models in the Stealth Reporter range shown – the 300AW which was too small, and the 400AW which was out of stock! But it struck me that the 400AW might just be the bag I’d been looking for if it was between the 300 and 550 sizes.
Not long after, I was browsing on e-bay, and to my surprise there was an immaculate almost new Lowepro AW 400 for sale that had only been used for indoor storage. I won it for £41.50. Not bad considering that the Calumet price was around £105.
The Lowepro Stealth Reporter 400AW has six cells in the main compartment using the usual Lowepro Velcro divider system that attach to the sides of the inner compartment with Velcro type fastenings. Two of the dividers are full height, are more substantial than the other dividers and have ‘hinged’ top sections presumably to support the camera body on either side of the lens, the others are shorter. However, I have used one of the short dividers from the bag plus another spare one from another bag to act as camera supports in the central cell, so the camera fits in between the tall dividers rather than across them. The camera is at 90 degrees to what I think is the normal orientation. This means that the full height dividers are not folded over and thus allow better access to the other compartments. The camera does not have to be removed to access the other cells. All of them can accommodate any of my f2.8 lenses. There are no pockets in the lid because there is a waterproof zip in the lid that allows you to access the inside of the main compartment and get your camera in and out of the bag even if the lid is closed and secured.
There are no side pockets, but under the front flap of the lid there are two small pockets and a slim full width pocket. There is an accessory pouch to keep small items that might otherwise get lost that can be put into one of the cells or laid across the top of the cells depending on what is in it, and a memory card wallet that can be attached to the bag by a cord. It also has a belt loop. There is a dedicated pocket for this wallet on the inner wall of the bag. At the back of the bag there is another pocket that has a zipped bottom to allow the handle of a trolley bag to pass through it, or it could be used as a document pouch if zipped up.
There is a shoulder strap with an impressive looking pad that fails miserably to maintain its position on the shoulder. There is a waist band/belt which if used with the shoulder strap over your head rather than on your shoulder would probably hold the bag on your hip securely, and give the zip access in the lid some purpose as the bag would then probably then be slow to remove. I have now looked on the Lowepro web site and the main strap is indeed intended to be worn over your head and what I took to be a waist strap in fact is designed to go around your body and in their video attaches to the main strap. This seems to allow a degree of movement while retaining stability. Having looked again at the straps I can’t see an attachment point on the main strap or a fitting on the waist strap that would take the main strap, so maybe it is as I first thought, a waist strap/belt. The ‘instruction’ leaflet did not come with the bag. I’ll have to look at one in a shop. I’ve not tried this configuration as I don’t anticipate using this bag with the main strap (it is not even attached to the bag) and I don’t want to disturb the tightly packed and secured waist strap that cannot be removed from the bag. I do hate having straps dangling all over the place. EDIT Since writing this review I have found that this strap can, in fact be removed from the bag.
Fortunately there is an excellent carrying handle which was a great attraction to this bag for me. It is attached to a large metal ring on each side of the bag and can be easily moved out of the way to the back of the bag to allow the lid to be opened without having to undo any lid clips or zips (unless you have done them up, of course). This feature of being able to use the carrying handle without having to secure the lid is so useful if you are on the move and want quick access to the contents of the bag. The lid has a single clip on the flap and a zip around the circumference of the body of the bag, just as most bags do these days, but I rarely use the zips unless I want the extra security they provide. Many bags have two clips to hold the flap of the lid down, and my Tamrac has four! So to find a bag that has only one clip was a real bonus.
There is quite a big space from the top of the shorter dividers to the lid, and a reasonable space from the full height dividers, so the camera strap has plenty of room and does not prevent the lid from closing unlike some other bags I’ve tried.
The bag is designed to take the camera vertically. My D700 with the Nikkor 24-70f2.8 is easily accommodated and it will also fit in if fitted with my 80-200f2.8 lens – albeit a tight fit.
The whole inner compartment can be removed from the bag, but I can’t see why you might want to do this. Maybe if you were carrying a camera with a long lens that could not be accommodated in the bag vertically it would be handy.
In summary the bag offers very quick access to all of the contents by only having one clip on the lid that does not have to be done up to carry the bag by the handle. There is also the zip in the lid that allows fast access to the main compartment even if the lid is closed and secured and you are wearing the bag with both straps in place. It has adequate capacity for most shooting situations and the build quality is typically Lowepro – very good. It is lacking some features that you might expect on a camera bag, there are no tripod loops for instance. But with the word ‘Stealth’ in the name the missing features are the ones that would identify the bag as a camera bag.
The sharp-eyed will note that my D300 is in the bag for this picture
|
|
Pixalo Photography Community
