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This week I’m talking about my new backpack, F-Stop Gear’s Ajna. This isn’t a review by any means, I haven’t had the bag out in the field yet, so I can’t really comment on it in that respect.

Show Notes

This week I’m talking about my new backpack, F-Stop Gear’s Ajna. This isn’t a review by any means, I haven’t had the bag out in the field yet, so I can’t really comment on it in that respect.

What attracted me to F-Stop Gear’s bags is their use of a modular camera case that mounts into the main part of the bag. They call it an Integrated Camera Unit or ICU. On a whole, the cases tend to be much smaller than the bag as a whole, which makes most of them very much compliant with airline carry on regulations.

I ended up buying a large pro ICU, but really there’s a lot options depending on how much you want to shift your balance between camera bag and hiking pack.

Overall I really only have 2 complaints with the Ajna, and to some extent the rest of F-Stop’s backpacks. Specifically with respect to the Ajna is the lack of padding on the shoulder straps. To put some perspective on this, the Ajna is a 40 liter pack, though I don’t really have any good point of reference to compare to with respect to other hiking packs.

However, unlike a regular hiking pack, the Ajna is designed to be a camera bag not just a pack for clothes food, and sleeping gear. I can’t say for certain, but I suspect, that the glass and magnesium of cameras and lenses tends to be more dense than the typical stuff that would be in normal hiking pack. At least, I was easily able to load my bag up with 40 pounds of camera gear alone before I even got to worry about water, clothes, and so forth.

And it’s not like F-Stop gear does’t do thicker padding on their straps, the next model up, the [Tilopa][] has much thicker padding on the shoulder straps. My gut feeling is that F-Stop Gear should have used that across the board — but again, I’m not an expert on this so I certainly could be wrong.

My other complaint, and this I believe applies to the whole of F-Stop’s line, is that while they provide space for a hydration bladder. It’s a pocket in the main compartment, with not all that much besides gravity and what I hope is a water proof pocket wall, separating it from the camera gear and the rest of your clothes or whatever you have in the main compartment.

That said, I’ve found few anecdotes of Camelback bladders breaking — the fill cap can leak under the right conditions though — so I might be over imagining the risk somewhat.

Speaking of Camelbak reservoirs, I went with the 3L (100 oz.) StoAway 100 Oz/3L^{(Affiliate Link)} . My reasoning was 2 fold, first while I don’t think I’ll always need or want 3 liters, you can always under fill a larger reservoir, but you can’t put 3 liters in a 1 liter one. Secondly, while I could have gotten the reservoir on its own, the StoAway is fully insulated, which I think will come in handy in the future.