Gear Review: Think Tank Retrospective Ten Camera Bag

    Bag review number two. Started off a bit back with a review of my large kitchen sink bag, the Airport Accelerator. That one is awesome for carrying everything while traveling, but it is not a shoot out of day bag. I have two bags I use for that purpose, the first and slightly larger of the two is the Think Tank Retrospective 10.  As you may have guessed, I am becoming quite the fan of Think Tank products.  What can I say, they make good gear. Very well thought out, good attention to even the smallest details, and lots of pleasant surprises in their gear.

   

    The retrospective is my go to bag for a day or days out shooting. I carry everything to wherever I am going in the Accelerator, then transfer what I need for the day into the retrospective and go. It is small enough to carry around all day without being obnoxious, and reconfigurable enough to give a lot of options for what you can pack into it. I've loaded it several ways but I'll start with my most recent shoot,  the San Diego Fringe Festival. I went into a bit more detail on that one in my last post, but I didn't know what the different venues and shows were going to bring to the table, so I packed for anything. Here is what I put into the bag for the weekend:

 That's the D4 with a 24-70mm, hood attached in shooting position. 

70-200 with hood reversed

SB910 flash

Lumiquest soft box

50mm prime

Carry Speed strap

spare batteries

  The pro body is almost too big for the bag, but it does fit and everything closes. The 50mm is on the opposite side from the 70-200. I wound up folding the flash to 90 degrees and putting it on top of the 50mm in the same pocket so the outside pocket was more free for my pocket stuff and the iPad. The lumiquest went into the rear pocket, which is covered by the open flap. That pocket is actually designed to hold an ipad, but I needed it for the soft box and the mini fit up front just fine. There are also slim pockets on either end that I keep business cards and filters in. Inside of the main front compartment there are some organizer pockets as well that can't be seen in this image. 

  It also wound up holding my iPad mini, wallet, phone and keys to keep my pockets empty and therefor quiet while I was shooting. There was still more room in the bag after all that, I could have thrown in another flash, and although I won't know for sure until I get one, I think that instead of the 50mm I could have thrown in a 14-24mm. So- what I am saying is that I think this bag will hold the holy trinity of lenses and a nikon pro body with enough room left for a couple of speedlights and misc toys. There are a few different versions of the bag, but I think this is the perfect size. That's a nice point, but it isn't what really sets this bag apart in my view. There are plenty of bags out there that are similarly sized (believe me, I looked at most of them) What sets this one apart are the little Think Tank details and small extras.

    UPDATE- It will fit the holy trinity. Tested this weekend and I was able to carry the D4 with 24-70 attached hood in shooting position, the 70-200 and the 14-24mm along with two speed lights and miscellaneous gear. 

    For starters, looks. This does not look like your typical camera bag. Unless you are a photographer it would be easy to mistake this for an overpacked messenger bag, especially in the pinestone (mine) or blue, not sure about the black, that one looks more traditional, one of the reasons I went with the tan. This doesn't really look like it is packing $10k worth of camera gear. Good for wandering around cities and traveling. 

   Another handy feature you can see above is the grab handle on the top, really convenient when you need to move the bag around while sitting in your car and don't feel like dealing with the shoulder strap. Speaking of which, the shoulder strap and pad are very comfortable, even when the bag is loaded to the max, and is easily adjustable. The attachments are all solidly sews with metal hardware, plenty robust enough to carabiner a coffee mug or water bottle to. The pockets and divider system are all well thought out and pretty reconfigurable given the size of the bag. But there are even more little details. The biggest and most awesome one for the type of shooting I do is silencers. The main pockets are all held closed with velcro tabs. Substantial ones for the main pocket. With both tabs fully velcro'ed together I can turn the fully loaded bag upside down and shake it and nothing is going to rip the cover open and fall out. But if I need to do a lens change during a quiet moment in a theatre or dance performance, the last thing I want to do is rip open massive velcro closure tabs. Think Tank gets it. Each velcro tab has a built in silencer. Basically a flap of the opposite side of the velcro that you can fold over to keep the pockets from sealing. The bag won't be secure, but it can be opened and shut with no noise whatsoever. Or you can go medium and silence one main tab while still using the other to hold the top down. I just go total silent during the performance and re-set the bag to fully shut after curtain call.  It's one of those little things that is so simple and obvious I can't believe it isn't used everywhere, which is the mark of genius. 

    So, that's pretty much it. Right size for a day of shooting where you need to carry more than bare bones but don't want to haul everything around. It blends in and doesn't shout "STEAL ME, I AM A CAMERA BAG!" from the top of the mountain. It is very easy to work out of and has a lot of little touches that make it a pleasure to use and perfect for the environments I find myself working in. This is my go to bag for almost everything other than heavy travel. The only thing it can't do is hold the 70-200 mounted with hood in shooting position.