Product Review: Dakine Sequence Photo Bag / Backpack
For the last few months I’ve been researching and looking for a photography bag that would carry a shit load of camera gear along with the possibilities of carrying my laptop and other various items. So I was kicking myself when I didn’t immediately think of Dakine, as they’re known for making some pretty fantastic backpacks.
With that said, I jumped onto Dakine’s site, www.dakine.com, and found that they indeed had backpacks designed for photo gear, not just one pack, but three different ones varying in size. The offering included Reload, Sequence and Mission Photo. Judging by the photos and specs, the Reload was eliminated for me, personally, as it was too big, so I had a decision to make between the other two and eventually decided to go with the Sequence in black.
A few short days later and the bag arrived and I was not disappointed at all. The bag 1. looks gorgeous, 2. felt comfortable on the initial strap in and 3. had pockets galore to fit various items of my “emergency” kit. Now one thing I have to tell you all, is that this bag loads from the back, while it has room in the front slots for a ton of stuff, the majority of the room fits in the back of the bag. Meaning there’s a zipper in the back that opens up a huge space in the bag where the camera block sits.
I quickly broke the whole bag down and loaded in my camera gear and various items into the bag. Why the rush you ask. I was leaving the next day to Sasquatch! Music Festival, so the bag couldn’t have arrived at a better time and so I wanted to get a feel for it before I went out there. After I packed everything in, I examined the bag for a moment and actually realized that I could fit my laptop, an 15 inch Apple MacBook Pro. 30 seconds later, what do you know, I’ve fit my laptop, camera, 2 lens, camera flash, and a bunch of other personal junk.
The next test was to actually try the camera on and see how it felt. It’s one thing to be able to load everything in, but its another to be able to carry it comfortably. Test passed, the bag was actually very comfortable to carry considering I loaded so much stuff in it. The funny thing is that it can fit a lot more camera gear if you wanted, which is great to know as I expand my collection of lenses.
The final verdict. I carried this bag the all three days for a minimum of 10 hours a day at Sasquatch Music Festival in 86 – 90 degree Fahrenheit weather, and with all the running I had to do in between stages to get my shots, it really felt like shit was 100+ degrees. Remember I had my camera gear, laptop, chargers, water bottles, snacks and a bunch of other stuff in this bag. The whole time I kept thinking to myself that I was glad I wasn’t carrying a shoulder / messenger bag cus my shoulder would be dead, but in this case because it is a backpack, the load was shared across my whole back and shoulders, which made carrying the whole thing a whole helluva lot easier. So would I recommend this? Hells to the yeah. If you don’t have a lot of gear and are a casual shooter, I would recommend the smaller bag, the Mission Photo, if you have a bit of stuff go with the one I used, The Sequence. You already know Dakine makes quality backpacks and its no different for their photo backpacks. The same care, attention and quality are put into the bag. The camera block in the photo backpacks can also be removed thus turning the photo backpack into a regular everyday backpack that I now use when I go biking.
Visit www.dakine.com for all their product offerings
To buy the bag I used, Sequence, click here.
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