Summit Creative Tenzing 50L Roll Top Bag - Your next bag? A Review
Summit Creative Tenzing 50L Roll Top Bag - Your next bag?
By Chris Ewen Crosby
A new camera bag company, Summit Creative has appeared on the market and they asked me to take a peek at the new bag line and to let you all know my thoughts. I’ll admit that I was a bit hesitant to review the bag since I’ve been with F-Stop Gear for a few years as an ambassador and I have enjoyed that bag and I still do. However, I felt the insight I might be able to provide due to that partnership would be valuable to someone looking at purchasing the bag. I will say I’m staying with my F-Stop for now and I’ll explain why at the end.
First Thoughts
Upon receiving the bag I was immediately surprised by a few things:
There are lots of pockets in area’s of the bag where you normally wouldn’t see them, namely the shoulder straps and waist strap have pockets.
There are lots of padding on the shoulder straps and back area of the bag.
Tons of adjustable straps, including shoulders, securing and pocket size adjustments
Good expandability, including the roll-top expansion and bag depth expansions
After looking it over I packed up my gear and took it for a test spin on some local trails in Palos Verdes, CA. Check out the video below of my thoughts after wearing the bag for a while and take a look at all the bells and whistles that this bag has.
So what are my thoughts on this bag? As I said in the video, I think this is a great bag! It was very comfortable to wear, especially after adjusting to my body. It has great expandability for those bigger day hikes where you need to pack more gear. The inside of the bag holds quite a bit of gear comfortably and is easy to customize to fit the gear you need to bring. The 50L model I tried out could easily fit 2 bodies and 3 or 4 lenses if not more.
As I also mentioned in the video, there are a few things that I wish this bag had. I wish there were some smaller pockets in well protected areas for things like batteries, memory cards, small tools and other small items that slide around easily. There are few pockets on the sides and inside the main compartment, but they aren’t ideal for these things that I mentioned. I would recommend a smaller container to hold those items that could be placed in the top of the bag. One thing that I forgot to mention during the video is that it is missing an area to place a water bladder. There is a hole to place a bladder inside the top pocket, but it’s not the ideal size to have a bladder. It would be much better if there was a pocket that could protect the bladder away from other things that might be in that top pocket.
So a question some of you might have is how do I compare it to my F-Stop Gear TILOPA 50L. I still prefer my F-Stop Gear bag for a few reasons. First, F-Stop Gear is a modular system, so I can quickly shift from my 50L bag to my 80L bag without much thought or planning. F-Stop Gear has smaller bags and carriers from that hold all of my small items, star tracker, cleaning tools, batteries, memory cards, etc. This is something that I would miss moving to the Tenzing. Second, my F-Stop Bag has lots of expansion capability as well. It can hold all of my camera gear and an extra jacket, star tracker and more quite comfortably. I will say that the attachment straps for adding your tripod and any other gear to the outside of the bag is very similar between the two bags. F-Stop gear still has a slight advantage in this department due to the numerous strap options available. Summit Creative have also made some additional strap options available to purchase for attaching more gear to the bag securely.
Well there you have it, my thoughts on the new Tenzing 50L Roll Top Bag from Summit Creative. Overall, I am impressed with the new camera bag line. It meets all my photography needs while looking great. If you are in the market for a bag this might be serious contender for your next bag.
Have a question about the bag? Drop a comment below and I’ll answer it for you as quick as possible.
A landscape photographer and educator from Southern California creating unique and powerful landscape images.
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