Let me start with a little disclaimer- I live in San Diego. This means it rains maybe one or two weeks out of the year. I grew up in New Orleans, so I know what weather and real thunderstorms are like, San Diego just doesn't really have them. That being said, it finally got a little drizzly this past weekend so I can review my Optech USA rain sleeve.
Before the weather system moved in, I had a model lined up to do a pinup shoot on a beach with an antique fire truck. For some reason, the fire fighters didn't want to take their antique truck out in the rain, so that shoot got cancelled, but the model still wanted to play, so we headed out to Balboa park, figured a rainy day would be a good day to play in the fountains.
Excalibur is pretty well sealed, wasn't worried about the camera or my lenses in the rain, the wild card was my flash, I have no data whatsoever on the durability of my SB910 or Mittros flashes other than the fact that they have taken a bit of sea spray fine in Hawaii. But no fear, I had my rain sleeve from Optech, which I got before a trip to New Orleans, but didn't wind up needing then.
My model was worried about her outfits being a little "skanky," I told her that was ok because my camera had a condom- which is basically what the Optech rain sleeve boils down to.
There are two versions of the rain sleeve, the regular and the flash model, I went for the flash model, as seen above. There are no instructions in the two pack, just two rain sleeves. Took me a second to figure it out, there is an opening on the side where the bottom of the camera winds up, and a hold with a drawstring where the lens goes. The trick that took me a second to get is that to put this on, you put the flash on the camera body, then remove your lens. Insert the camera/flash combo into the main part of the sleeve, then insert the lens through the lens opening and attach it to the camera body. This is not as easy as it sounds because the plastic had a tendency to get caught in the lens mount, but with a little practice I don't think it would be too hard. Once the lens is on, cinch the drawstring down around the lens hood to seal it up.
This is the first minor issue I had with the sleeve- the drawstring was stupidly long, not a problem if you only shoot horizontal and never move your camera, but if you are running and gunning and shifting from horizontal to vertical a lot, you need to either tie the excess drawstring out of the way or stuff in back inside the sleeve, otherwise you may wind up with drawstring in your shots.
The second issue is lens selection. As you can see above, I used to 70-200mm and had some sleeve to spare. Not sure what the largest lens this will fit is, the site lists measurements, not actual lenses, but there was some excess with my 70-200. I think I could have made it work with my 24-70mm but anything shorter, like my 50mm or the 18-55mm kit that came with my D3200, would have been wayyy to short for this sleeve to work easily.
Once the sleeve was on, operation was easy, right hand goes into the bottom of the sleeve to work camera controls, left hand runs zoom through the bag. Flash was completely unaffected, if there was any diffusion effect or loss of light from the sleeve I couldn't notice it. Looking through the viewfinder was also not an issue with the sleeve in place, it was slightly more trouble than without the sleeve, but not so much that I noticed after the first shot or so.
What did become an issue was chimping on the LCD screen. The cover fogged up a bit after a few minutes of shooting, and to effectively view the LCD screen, either to see the histograms or to show the model how things were looking, I had to pull the cover up and over the LCD because it was difficult to impossible to effectively see the screen through the sleeve. Not a big issue for me, but if you shoot primarily live view or video this could be a show stopper for you.
So- verdict on the Optech Rain Sleeve? It did as advertised, kept my camera and flash dry and let me get some shots in a rare spate of pretty nasty weather.
I have not used other more expensive rain protection, like the Think Tank line, so I cannot speak to the comparison other than generally. If you live or work somewhere such that you have to deal with inclement weather on a regular basis, you should probably look to one of the more hard core protective systems like the Think Tank one. On the other hand, if you are like me and live somewhere that 51 weeks out of the year you don't have to have a care in the world for the weather, save your money and go for the Optech. It is comparatively cheap, is easier to use than kludging together a set of ziplock bags, and it does the job. The one other bonus is that it is transparent - if for some reason you haven't been shooting long enough to memorize all your camera's controls and operate them by touch, the optech lets you see what you are doing. Is it perfect- no, but it works. Make sure it will fit your camera/lens combo, buy a two pack, shove it into a corner of your camera bag, car or wherever, and forget about it until you need it, then it will give you the confidence and feeling of security you need to bring your camera out to play when the weather gets nasty.
Conclusion- Pros who regularly shoot in inclement weather will probably want something more robust. Part timers or pros who don't frequently need protection from the elements should consider spending the $8 to put a set of these in your bag. They don't take up much more space than a set of filters and will get you through a rainy day that catches you by surprise.
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