I've finally gotten round to taking some not-so-professional-looking snapshots of the Skyborne 45 to let you guys take a look at its major features if you're considering a camera backpack for travelling.
Before I begin, I must say that I am really a sucker for functionality; anything that looks good is just a bonus. Before I headed out of my house to the shops, I did some research online and looked at the reviews for different bags from Lowepro, Kata, Naneu and Tamrac, and made a checklist of the features I had to look out for when I checked out the physical items.
Firstly, it had to be a daypack. What I mean by daypack is that the bag has a section dedicated to storing your camera gear, and the other section is just an empty compartment to put your daily necessities such as a jacket, umbrella, food or other things you'd need on your travels. This necessarily eliminated a lot of bags that was dedicated entirely to professional camera gear of up to 2 bodies and a whole lot of lenses.
This is the compartment for your random stuff, and note that this compartment and the camera compartment is opened from the back. This is one of the safety features designed into the Skyborne 45 so that your belongings are safer because you can't really take out anything if you're actually wearing the Skyborne.
The camera compartment, which can fit maybe one body and a few lenses or even 2 bodies and 1 or 2 lenses? That'd have to depend on how you rearrange the velcro dividers I believe. But don't trust me on that I don't actually have two bodies to test that theory out, it's pretty roomy and it's best you try to bring your own bodies to test before you get it.
I also needed good cushioning and support so that the weight wouldn't feel so massive when you're carrying that for long periods of time, and you'd actually feel safer if you do happen to accidentally drop the bag along with the contents inside. The Skyborne does an excellent job at that - its elevated padding allows air to flow in between, supposedly allowing ventilation so that you sweat less when wearing it. This claim still needs to be verified as I haven't actually worn it for long periods yet, so this will have to wait till after my trip.
You can see the extensive amount of padding here, especially at the camera compartment. It even comes with a heavily padded waist strap reminscent of those huge rucksacks that backpackers use. You can also see the handphone pouch on the right strap, which is quite a nice bonus for those that cannot live without their smartphones or any portable gadget like a mp3 player.
Next, it had to be able to bear a tripod. No biggie here but you'll be surprised at the large number of bags that
cannot hold tripods, and preferably mounted at the centre so that the weight would not be imbalanced if I decide to upgrade to a heavier and sturdier tripod later on. The centre-mounted property is just a personal preference as I injured my back in the army; many people could just do with a side mount. My tripod now is a free one that I got bundled with my D3100 when I bought it - it's really light, which is a good thing, but the legs slowly retract slowly when fully extended, so if I were to get serious about long exposures I'd probably need another one.
The tripod mount comes with a adjustable buckle - you can slide it up and down depending on how large your tripod is and where you want to secure the tripod. You cannot really see it here since the tripod is covering the buckle, so you can take a look at that when you actually test the bag out.
For all its portability and comfort, a camera bag won't be a camera bag without a quick release hatch. This allows you to quickly pull your camera out to capture those fleeting moments that you otherwise would not have caught if you had to slowly take off your bag and retrieve the camera. The Skyborne has a pretty good quick release hatch, but I still believe the best (in terms of convenience and time taken) quick release mechanism is that of the Vanguard Up-Rise series by far.
The Up-Rise quick release hatch as taken from the vanguardworld.com site, which features a twin zipper that unzips both sides after you unbuckle the clip.
Compare that to the one of the Skyborne below, which requires you to unzip one whole round around the flap. I guess I could eventually get used to that and do it really quickly, but I still expect myself to do it slower than if I were to get used to the Up-Rise.
The same camera compartment with the quick release hatch open. The hatch cover itself features two memory card slots, which look safe enough to keep the cards inside and not have them damaged, though you could always get a memory card wallet just to be extra safe. The last I checked, a Lowepro memory card wallet costs $12...
I needed a laptop compartment, and by this point it was clear that my expectations of camera bags were really pushing the limit of design and comfort. There were bags that fit all of my requirements but without the laptop slot, and since I decided that I was going to bring this overseas when I went to uni, I'd definitely need a laptop slot. At this point, the Skyborne was probably the only bag that I had found with all the features I needed and more, so the choice was pretty clear.
The laptop compartment together with some pen holders, all decked in the signature orange interior of Vanguard bags. When I first opened the laptop compartment, I discovered that Vanguard even bundled in a laptop bag that could be used independently from the Skyborne.
It can fit a 12inch device, which would be able to fit most tablets like an iPad or any ebook reader, and it even comes with a strap so you can just use it like a stylish sling bag for everyday purposes! It can't get any better than this, can it?
Of course, another requirement of mine was that it had to fit into the size of a hand-carry for airport regulations... I mean, what's the point of getting a backpack that you have to check in right? I didn't want the backpack to be too attention-attracting as well, and it this respect the matt grey finish does it just fine for me. Looking like any other ordinary backpack will definitely reduce the chances of you getting jumped in countries with poorer security. (Add that to the fact that robbers probably haven't heard of Vanguard as compared to Prada and Gucci, it really helps [no offense Vanguard I really love your bags!])
The Skyborne features some other nifty features such as a raincover to protect your belongings in case you got caught in the rain without an umbrella or anything else.
The raincover is accessible from the base of the bag, and you can see the rubber feet with air pockets inside to cushion the bag properly and allow it to stand if you just set it on the floor or other surfaces.
This is with the raincover on, and again, it is a dull matt black which is exactly what I was looking for. Kata has yellow raincovers which I didn't want, since it drew so much attention to itself I'd probably just want to dig a hole to hide myself together with the bag, or just never use the raincover, which totally defeats the purpose of having a raincover in the first place. Kata's reasoning is that it is easier for you to locate the bag if it's dark, but I really don't want half the world to locate my bag at the same time that I do...
There's also a side pocket for a water bottle or other random belongings that you need to access quickly, probably umbrellas and caps or even ponchos.
Coming to the end of this review, I'd like to say that the Skyborne really packs in a lot of security features, like these buckles you see below.
They prevent the compartments from being opened even when unzipped, and there are buckles almost everywhere. However, that becomes a problem when there really is
a lot of buckles everywhere - at the waist strap, at the chest level in between the shoulder straps, buckles for the tripod, for the laptop compartment and also the rear-loaded daypack compartment. It does become a hassle if you were to buckle everything and you'd soon become an expect in strap management with the many loose ends that come with the buckles. However, I'd really consider that a small drawback for all the features it packs into the design and I hope this review helps you to make your decision.
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Other designs I were considering included:
- Lowepro Orion Trekker
- Lowepro Dryzone Rover (the reason I did not bother looking for this after testing another Dryzone was that the weather-sealed zip was really too troublesome to handle. I spent more than 5 minutes closing the zip completely and I definitely do not want that to happen everytime I needed to take out my gear/change lenses)
- Naneu Pro K3L
- Vanguard Up-Rise [forgot which number] (this is cheaper, but because both the daypack compartment and the camera compartment were accessed from the same zip I felt really unsafe that all my lenses and flash would drop out when I accessed my daypack compartment if I just happened to unzip a bit too much. You'd understand what I mean when you actually take a look at it (or you can look at the picture below taken from vanguardworld). Other than that, I was seriously considering this bag since it was cheaper and has almost all of the important features as well.)
Thanks for reading this really long post!
