First of all, major, major kudos to Lowepro for replacing my beat up
fastpack 350, which itself was a free replacement for my previous one.
If, after seeing the pictures they had said, "Nope, it's just plain worn
out, you can't blame that on us", I would have had no arguments.
They no longer make the 350, so they replaced it with the current
generation 250. It has several very nice improvements over mine. First
and foremost is that they have addressed my one major complaint, the
lack of a strap for a tripod. They now have a strap on the side to use
the water bottle pocket as a tripod holder. Unfortunately, the strap is
too low to do a good job of holding a full sized tripod, but it's a big
improvement.
The zipper on the wallet pocket is now horizontal rather than vertical.
It makes it a bit harder to get into that pocket, but also means that
when I forget to zip it back up, things are less likely to fall out.
They have added a couple of straps on the back to clip the bag to the
handles of a roller cart carry on bag.
There is now an all weather cover that resides in a pocket underneath
the bag. It took me a while to figure out where it was hidden.
The laptop computer pocket in the back now has a second smaller pocket
for holding a tablet.
I have one small quibble and one big complaint with it.
The small quibble is that it only seems to come in black. I rather liked
the choice of colors in camera bags, it made it easier to tell which one
was mine when I went out shooting with others.
My big complaint has to do with it being a 250 rather than a 350, the
main storage area is too small. Rather than being about three inches
wide and having room for three lenses, or two lenses and a folded
speedlight with extension cable and gel holder, the top row of velcro
divider pockets are about 1 1/2 inches wide and just barely big enough
for two speedlights lying on top of each other. With a little bit of
creativity, I can hold my filter wallet in that space.
Using old velcro attach divders, I was able to set up the top
compartment so that I can carry two lenses and a ballhead up there.
Where my 350 was big enough that I could carry all of the lenses that I
frequently need in a wide range of shooting conditions
( both a range of fast primes: 31, 50, 77 and maybe 35 macro as well a
range of zooms: 16-50, 28-75 and 18-250, and if need be stuff my korean
fisheye in the top pocket) the 250 is a smaller pack that would allow
me to carry the gear that I am likely to need for almost any one type of
shooting (a hike in the woods, or portraiture, or low light dance
photography), it is not quite big enough for me to easily just grab
without having to think about what sort of photo opportunities I might find.
--
Larry Colen l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est)
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