OK, confession time. I am not a photographer. The complexities of creating the beautiful images that grace web pages and walls everywhere are lost on me. At best I’m a picture-taker, so I would never call myself a photographer. I am, however, the esteemed picture-taker who has captured the images displayed on the Geargals site header, so I’ll just go with that as my qualifications for reviewing this photo bag from Crumpler. And an arduous task this is, too, because it’s going to be tough to convey how cool this bag is. In the picture above it just looks like a backpack, eh? Well, it’s a backpack all right, but it has every single photography-oriented feature that a picture-taker could think of. It has a special, shaped, padded pocket for your 35mm or your SLR (which I do have, by the way, so I know), little places for something called “film” (which I understand they used to use in the seventies, or something), and even a laptop sleeve and various other stashing-places for other stuff.

Like I said, I’m not a photographer, so I tried like hell to find another use for this bag. It fits a smaller frame well, is impossibly sturdy, and since I like bags with lots of compartments, I was determined to be able to use it for something other than lugging cameras, which I don’t do, well, ever. Alas, it’s pretty specialized and really is best as a photo bag. I can contend that it is a darn good photo bag, though, and Crumpler uses material that is practically bulletproof. Any field photographer would adore this bag and I don’t think it will ever wear out. It’s not light, but we’ve had that discussion, folks – it can be tough and not light, or light and not tough. If I were interested in protecting delicate photo equipment, I’d go with “tough”, but that’s just me. And I don’t think you’ll find much tougher than Crumpler (despite the name, “crumple” is something this bag absolutely won’t do). Crumpler makes a lot of messenger bags, photo bags, and various other types of stuff for haulin’ other stuff, and all of it is made with tough fabrics, sturdy construction, an eye for detail, and a weird name. Seriously. I’m not sure why they named this the “Sinking Barge” as that’s not really the image that I want to evoke in a bag that’s got all my cameras in it, but hey. I’m a reviewer, not a marketer….