I bought the Lowepro Slingshot 200AW bag for my dad a few years ago. It was designed for SLRs with many compartments for his camera, lenses, and other random accessories. I got it mainly because it was designed to wrap around your body so you can easily access your gear without having to take the bag off.
When I bought this bag as a present, my dad just got his Nikon F4 (film), so this bag is a few years old now, but similar models are still available. At around $80-90 it's a fairly cheap padded camera bag that you can take with you on vacation.
The Slingshot opens very differently from other bags. As said earlier, the point of this bag is to allow you to access your camera without having to take the bag off of your shoulders. It's a sling bag meaning that it just has one strap that goes across your body. It's still a backpack, and you have to just swivel the bag across from your back to the front of your body when you want to access your camera and equipment. It sounds like a good idea, but it's not all that comfortable especially if your gear is heavy. When your gear is heavy you'd want your bag closer to your back and not sagging. But when the bag strap is tight, and you swivel your bag to the front, the bag lies at your chest, which leaves little space for your arms to get at your equipment. I find myself having to loosen the strap before I swing the pack to my front so that the bag will lie at a good enough distance from my upper body (close to my stomach rather than at my chest). Also just having one strap to hold your gear isn't as comfortable as two straps.
The bag is slightly padded in all of its compartments. It's still pretty light weight. I would have wished that the back padding was a little bit stiffer. Overall the bag is fairly sturdy and there have been no problems with it in the 3 years that we've had it. Then again, it hasn't been used or taken out that much.
The main compartment has panels that you can add and remove to organize your gear the way you want to. When you unzip the main compartment, your camera is right there for you to grab and use immediately. This is very good positioning if you have a mid to small lens attached to your camera. However, you can't keep a very big telephoto lens on your camera in this position. When my dad had his Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 with Nikon F4 he had to remove the panels and lay the camera in the Lowe Pro Slingshot in a different way. There are two clips that stop you from opening the camera compartment fully, but you wouldn't want to open the main compartment fully because things may fall out. When your bag is safely on a flat surface, you can just undo the clips and open your compartment. Furthermore you can easily take the bag off with the clip that attaches the strap to the bag. There's also a small velcro pocket on the main compartment flap to store other accessories, and also a mesh pocket with a large micro-fibre cleaning cloth attached.
Aside from the main compartment for your camera and lenses, there are two other pockets for accessories and miscellaneous stuff. The smaller pocket in the front of the bag is designed for papers and pens, and slimmer items. I find that my dad keeps his spare double A batteries in here.
The larger pocket on the top actually has quite a bit of space. The triangle shaped compartment has a mesh pocket inside and also sufficient space for flashes and a small to mid sized lens.
Another good thing about this bag is that it has loops down the middle of the bag where you can attach a tripod to. I wish my Crumpler backpack had straps. Since the zipper of the main compartment is on the side of your bag, you can still access your gear even if you are carrying a tripod on the Slingshot.
The Lowe Pro Slingshot also keeps the straps fairly neat and tidy.
The AW stands for all-weather which just means it has an extra piece of fabric that you can put over your bag to repel rain.
The Slingshot 200 is the middle sized bag. There is also a smaller Slingshot 100, and a larger Slingshot 300.
If I were to buy another bag for my dad, I don't think I would make this purchase again. The overall comfortability of the bag doesn't make up for the bag's innovation.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
