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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Chest Pack or Holster Harnesses for hiking? | |
I have tried a few of those options:
Think Tank harness system is excellent when coupled with one of the padded belts. Pretty comfortable. By adding various packs the system is versatile and you can carry a lot of gear. However, the packs are bulky to pack when traveling by plane. If you are city walking the whole thing is awkward to take off and put back on. The system would not work well with a backpack with a hip belt. Also, the waist belt will ride down your hips (even when using the shoulder harness) unless you really cinch it tight which is less comfortable and more sweaty.
The Ribz pack is my current favorite but it is what it is - very simple. Unless you have no belly, walking with it zipped together is a little constricting when the pack is filled with camera gear. Depending on how the gear is arranged, it can poke at your sides and feel uncomfortable. Therefore, I almost always wear mine unzipped. For casual hiking that is secure enough. I would want to zip it up if I were scrambling over rocks or walking in such a way that the packs would swing or be almost upside down. But I try not to walk that way!
The Ribz has no padding. It is not arranged like a photo pack so you have to be creative and not over stuff it.
The Ribz is very comfortable and does not bind into my shoulders even if wearing all day. It is relatively easy to take off an on. One nice thing with the Ribz relative to the Think Tank belt system is that it is easy to sit down while wearing it e.g. in a car, bus, subway, etc. The Ribz is fairly secure in a crowd if you keep it zipped up because everything is right in front of you and you can rest each arm on one side of it. The Ribz packs down to almost nothing when empty so it is easy to pack in a carry on if you travel with a larger kit/bag and then use a subset of your gear for day use.
I use the Ribz with a Sony A7rII attached to one lens on one side 2 additional lenses on the other side. The lenses are the 16-35/4, 55/1.8, and 90/2.8 macro. I also carry a pair of Leica 10x25 binoculars, lens cloths, wireless releases, lens pen, Fotosharp camera rain jacket in the outer pockets. I can fit smaller filter wallets in the main compartments along with the camera gear - I use circular filters so I have a filter wallet for each lens. If I take all of my filters, I will put them is a different pack. The packs I use to supplement the Ribz are a super lightweight Sea to Summit silnylon backpack and the Thinktank lightweight (unpadded) belt with an accessory pouch. The latter is good for a water bottle, filters, miscellaneous. The backpack is good for a rain jacket, lunch, reflector, etc.
One annoyance of the Ribz pack is when you remove the camera and lens from one side so that all of the weight is on the opposite side. The weighted side tends to pull and elongate the straps in its side. A simple tug evens things out. I think I could fix it with a tweak to the harness (e.g. a safety pin) but I have not bothered. Just a little thing that bugs me.
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