The F-stop Shinn 80l camera rucksack
I have just taken delivery of an F-stop Shinn 80l camera rucksack. It took me quite a while to decide on buying one for wildlife cameraman work. There are not many camera bags as large as this one. Most large camera rucksacks that I have tried have usually been been extremely uncomfortable. I won’t name names, as I am not that big, and I think most bags are designed for giants. To be fair, the amount of kit we load into them should only be lifted by a giant.
The bag and its ICU (internal camera unit) was bought from Epic TV but they don’t seem to sell them anymore. For a start, there are not many companies that supply this bag. Epic are based in France, and you are billed from Finland. The products are sent from the USA. I don’t know where they’re made, but 99.9% of everything, including smog and vanity enhancing medicines, is made in China. I’ll have to check that when I care.
The whole point of buying this bag is for wildlife cameraman work. The F-stop Shinn 80l camera rucksack is pretty big, but it is light. Without the ICU it is a floppy bag with a frame and a lot of confusing pockets. With the ICU pushed snugly into place it starts to make sense. I didn’t want a Portabrace. They’re uncomfortable and expensive, and there are other design points that I don’t like. Oops, I’ve gone and said it. I wanted something that would take a Panasonic AG AF101 rigged with a Sigma 150-600 mm telephoto zoom and lens support. That’s quite a long rig. Additionally I wanted it to take the camera with a short Rode microphone on top and maybe a few other ‘bits’. The other bits would be a bonus. The picture shows the camera in place, and there is space for the Lumix 7-14 mm lens and a Lumix 14-140 mm lens. In the rest of the bag you can easily fit a Sennheiser G4 kit and Sennheiser HD 25 headphones. The kit is light, even with a couple of extra batteries.
The whole point of doing this was to be ready to shoot from ‘camera in bag’ very quickly. The bag is interesting in that you access from the back. How many times have you had to lie your bag down on wet grass, then put it back on to soak yourself. With this design it is the outside of the bag that gets wet and dirty. As it is: take bag off your back; remove the camera easily; plonk it on the tripod while turning it on; remove the soft lens cover; plug in the tripod handle switch if you have time; and shoot. Changing over to film wide shots would be as much of a faff as always, but you usually have more control over those.
That’s all on this item for the moment, as I propose to field test it rigorously.