When we think of recycling, most of us see plastic bottles, newspapers, and milk cartons. That’s why when Lowepro announced that their 40th Anniversary signature camera bag, the Primus AW, would be made of a 100% post consumer recycled material known as Cyclepet, I was curious to see how they would pull that off without sacrificing the durability. As we’ve found out in the past, Lowepro makes some seriously durable bags for demanding photographers so I was doubly curious to see how the apparent downgrade of material made of used “waterbottles” would stand up to real world use.
With the COMPUTEX Taipei trade show coming up as we received the bag just over a month ago, it was only natural for me to take it with me and just beat the crap out of it. I mean, how tough could a bag that used “enough recycled material to equate to approximately 22 soda bottles” be? I guess conserving “.0034 cubic yards of landfill space, 15,109 BTU’s of energy, .002 barrels of crude oil and .12 gallons of refined oil” through this bag’s production process at least gives you a warm fuzzy, but I would be the wrong warm and fuzzy if all my DSLR gear hit the ground. Let the story unfold here my friends!
Specifications
Our Primus AW features the following measurements:
The bag is fully airline carry on approved so you shouldn’t have any problems taking it into the cabin with you. We tested this during our trip filled up pretty good and we were able to push the whole bag in any overhead compartment that we came across. The bag will not fit under the seat in front of you though, but you wouldn’t want it there anyway.
The weight of the bag without any gear was 4.6lbs or 2.1kgs if you’re metric. So despite its recycled nature, it still isn’t some lightweight flimsy thing. However, we’ll see if it will tear apart under load and abuse. The Lowepro Primus AW comes in Black as shown and an Arctic Blue version. It hits the streets at around $199US or less.
Features and Impressions on the Outside
We’ve already talked about the Cyclepet fabric that this bag is made of. Initial impressions of the material are positive and to be honest, I had a hard time telling the difference from it over some of the other good bags that I’ve had from Lowepro and other manufacturers. So let’s check out some of the cool features of this bag…
Lowepro uses YKK zippers for the whole bag. With over a month of tugging and pulling, the zippers all over the bag have held up very well from repeated use. One thing that was somewhat of a sore point was seeing how cheap the zipper pulls were. Granted, there was no functional issues with them, but I do like to see solid metal or rubberized pulls on a special bag like this 40th Anniversary Edition. Every single one of the zipper pulls used this “shoelace-like” material. I know it is a bag using recycled materials, but I prefer to not look like it as much as possible. In fact, I had to re-tie a few of these “shoelaces” as they seem to untie themselves every so often. You can, however, take a lighter to them if you want them to stay put forever. On the other side of the zippers are weather flaps that keep your gear protected in case you forget to seal all the way up.
One thing that I’ve noticed lacking on many of the Lowepro backpacks that I’ve used in the past was the simple inclusion of a waterbottle holder. I mean, next to food, water is pretty important, especially when you’re hiking and sunning in the backcountry. Instead of mesh, Lowepro has outfitted the Primus AW with an expandable fabric pocket that allows you to carry and secure anywhere from a standard sized soda pop can to one of those 1.1 litre bottles without it falling out easily. I wonder why it took them this long to include such a useful feature. All my cheapie bags have them. Nonetheless, a nod for doing it…finally.
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The back of the bag features an outside hatch pocket that allows you to store various personal items like jackets and magazines and other useful things. On my trip to Taipei, I had a large bottle of Maple Syrup and slab of Smoked Salmon. As a backcountry bag, pick axes, avalanche shovels, probes, avalanche beacons and climbing rope should be part of that list as well. However, there is some controversy here at the office as to whether or not this compartment would actually be secure for avalanche gear. As quoted from a very experienced backcountry guide: “If it’s not inside the bag, it will go flying if you get into an avalanche. If you throw your avalanche gear in it, and God forbid, get into a slide, you’re not going to live because your shovel, probe and beacon will be somewhere else while you suffocate”.
I do trust this person and I would probably listen to his words carefully as his experience far exceeds the average outdoor snow enthusiast. Although I cannot substantiate whether this is true or not, I don’t intend on getting buried in the snow to find out. However, I do understand the logic as the compartment is fairly open and stuff could be torn out of it with enough force, like an avalanche for instance. Moving along, I did also notice an expandable mesh pocket on the inside of the flap that can easily carry a small Camelbak bladder so you can stay hydrated outdoors. The whole flap is secured by four quick release straps.
The Primus AW features a vastly improved tripod carrying system consisting of an adjustable Glidelock buckle up top and a pouch that rolls out to accept the legs. This pouch is zippered up and stowed out of the way till you need it. It is constructed well and should even hold up to tripods that are spiked thanks to the high density material.
The Glidelock features lots of quick up and down adjustment allowing you to carry as big a tripod as you would want to carry around. The buckle is also adjustable and is very quick to disengage, allowing you to pull your tripod at a moments notice. I had no problems carrying around my Manfrotto 190XPROB Tripod and the attached 322RC2 pistol grip head. Compared to the silly elastic bungie cord of days gone by, this is like going from coal to nuclear power…not really…but nonetheless, still very cool. This features makes it onto many of Lowepro’s bags this year and not a moment too soon. The tripod storage also works with monopods and pick axes and shovels, but again, if it’s not IN the bag, our avalanche expert says it goes bye bye…and you too.
Lowepro’s seam sealed All Weather waterproof cover works just as well as ever, providing a layer of protection from rain or dust. In a foreign country during travel, it also works as a theft deterrent for all the things you may be carrying in the outside hatch pocket.
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The Harness System
A backpack that you use to carry your gear is sometimes weakened by a poorly made harness system. That’s not the case with the Lowepro Primus AW. This bag uses an 8 point harness system that allows you to comfortably carry any load. The system consists of a sternum strap that glides on a Glidelock system of its own, two well padded shoulder straps that contain a DryFlo quick wicking lining and a heavy duty waist strap that seems much too large for the bag, but really isn’t as you’ll find out. To increase comfort, the whole back area is also lined with this DryFlo material.
Harkening back to its backcountry roots, the Primus AW also has a whistle built right into one of the buckles on the sternum strap. This could come in real handy if you’re stuck in the woods somewhere or if you’re out in the urban jungle, call attention to yourself so you don’t get mugged.
Storing Your Stuff Inside
The Primus AW contains two storage compartments: One on the bottom for storing all your camera gear, and one on top for storing everything else. This bag contains no laptop compartment, but if you carry a small portable laptop like an Asus Eee PC, you should be able to fit that in this top compartment no problem. For anything larger, you’re pretty much out of luck.
However, having said that, the compartment does containt quite a bit of extra room for things like flash units, chargers, and other accessories. In addition to all that stuff, I was also able to carry a full change of clothes with me inside the bag along with some extra toiletries. The flap that covers this compartment has pockets for and organizers for things like pens, keys, USB hard drives, pretty much anything else you can think of that is relativesly small, and preferably flat as the flap doesn’t allow much expansion.
The bottom compartment is built for your camera gear and features user configurable compartments to fit most setups which include DSLRs with lenses up to 70 – 200mm attached, compact 3CCD DV camcorders, and a couple extra lenes and other related accessories. The flap that covers up this compartment has a built in memroy card holder that holds two compact flash cards even with their holders. The rest of the flap gives you room for extra batteries, chargers, or filters and caps.
At first, I thought that both compartments were designed to open under the harness area to prevent theft as they cannot be accessed while you had the bag on. Although it does serve this purpose extremely well, the real reason is more of a backcountry reason, which is to prevent the straps from getting dirty when you lay the bag on the ground and need to access your gear. I also found this extremely handy for urban assaults because there is no telling where someone spat or urinated or worse in some foreign countries.
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Getting At Your Stuff From Outside
There’s actually a couple ways to get at your gear from outside…
On the right side of the bag there is a zippered compartment that allows you quick access to your camera. This compartment is opened with the help of a long handled zipper and your stuff is kept from falling out through the use of a stiff flap that opens only with a bit of force from your hand. I found that this compartment works fine with DSLRs without an attached grip.
For example, my Nikon D80 body with a 17-55 f/2.8 lens seemed to slide in and out just dandy. However, when I tried this with my Nikon D200 body which does have a grip attached with the same lens attached, I was not only unable to pull it out, but I think I pulled a shoulder muscle trying this reach around method. I did try to swing the bag around using only the shoulder strap so that I could see the compartment, but the weird shape in which this compartment was fashioned didn’t make reinsertion quick or painless. If you have a small DSLR body and a big lens, no problem. Big body plus big lens equals problem.
If you do have the big PRO body or grip attached, then you’re going to have to use the waist strap method. Basically you cinch up the waist strap, undo your shoulder straps, and swing the whole bag in front of you, giving you full access to both compartments. The first time I tried this, I was so afraid that all my stuff would fall out and crash to the floor that I had to open it on a soft surface. Fortunately, because the waist strap is so beefy, and as long as you tighten it up, you’ll have no problems. I’ve performed this manouver countless times on the fly and I’ve never had a problem with self ejecting camera accessories.
How Much Stuff Can You Really Store?
I was actually really surprised at how much gear I could cram in here. In the above picture, I’ve got my Nikon D200 with grip and a Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens, an extra 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, and a Nikon SB600 flash unit. When I went over to Taipei, I filled this same compartment with my Nikon D200 with grip and the same Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens, a Nikon 35mm f/2.0 prime, a Sigma 10-20mm Wide Angle Lens, and a Samsung HMX-20C HD Camcorder. In the closing flap, I also shoved two D200 batteries, eight AA batteries and two extra memory cards along with the chargers for both camera and camcorder.
Up in the top compartment, I threw my ASUS U1F 11.1 inch notebook, the charger for it, my Nikon SB600 flash, my SONY MDR-7506 Monitor Headphones, my Microsoft ZUNE, plus a change of clothes and toiletries. I also had a box of smoked salmon and maple syrup stored in the flap compartment along with a jacket and some magazines and I still had some room to spare. The bag probably weighed around 40 lbs at this point, but thanks to the good harness system, it was still fairly easy to manouver through tight lineups and aircraft cabins. The whole thing still stowed easily into an overhead compartment.
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Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The Lowepro Primus AW was a surprise in a couple different ways. For starters, it’s bigger on the inside than it looks and secondly, I’m now a believer that recycled materials are just as good as non-recycled ones. Granted, I didn’t take it outdoors in the dirt, but I did take it into the humid and hot climate of a Taipei Summer which consisted of quite a bit of monsoon style rain. I also tugged and pulled on every strap on this bag many, many times while I covered the COMPUTEX Taipei trade show going from appointment to appointment. I also opened and closed, zipped and unzipped, packed and repacked this bag countless times on the showfloor which is far more times than I would probably open my bag in the outdoors. Although durability is no longer suspect, there would be a few areas that I would improve upon.
For starters, whoever specced the grip for the side zippered compartment didn’t open it enough times to watch it fail. The loop kept disengaging from the zipper portion, leaving me holding this piece with no way to undo the rest of the zipper. Eventually, I just took a set of plyers to the zipper and clamped it closed, but that’s something that I really shouldn’t have to do. Speaking of the side zippered compartment, although it worked for smaller DSLR bodies, it did not work for my Nikon D200 with a grip. I could neither pull it out nor get it back in with any lens. It does say Pro Digital SLR on the feature list, but I think that should now include an “except” the side zippered pocket. It did work fine with the waist strap access method, but does put you in a bit of an awkward situation where someone could bump the front of your bag and have you crying over spilled glass. Very expensive spilled glass.
Things that the Lowepro Primus AW did really right for me was the water bottle holder and the tripod holder. Both features worked better than expected. Although the backcountry avalanche viability of the hatch pocket is still under deliberation, I did find that this compartment was surprisingly useful to me, especially at a trade show where people tend to stuff your hands with crap that you have to put somewhere. I also found both storage compartments bigger than they looked and did like the dual purpose of having the compartments inaccessible with the bag on, both for security and for keeping the straps clean when laying the bag on the ground. Speaking of the straps, as the bag became increasingly bloated from marketing propaganda, the 8 point harness stepped up to keep things stable, yet comfortable.
Overall, the Lowepro Primus AW does so much right, but is only a few tweaks from being perfect. Although it isn’t built for a laptop, I would like to see something in the future which would allow a photographer or videographer to take along a small compact notebook which was signalled as a coming trend at COMPUTEX. I’d also like to see a redesign of of the side zippered pocket to make it truly workable with a Pro Digital SLR. Other than that, the Primus AW is another solid bag from Lowepro and I highly recommend it to anyone that loves to shoot in the outdoors. The features are well matched for that and the Polar Bears around the world will thank you as Lowepro will donate a portion of the sale of each bag to Polar Bears International. All this and a fuzzy feeling inside.
Pros
- Much improved Tripod carrying system over previous attempts.
- Water bottle holder is functional and secure
- More room than meets the eye in the dual compartments
- Location of compartments provides extra security for your stuff
- Well designed 8 point harness is stable and comfortable
- I’m now a believer in recycled material. It’s no weak sauce material.
Cons
- Zippered side pocket dysfunctional with a Pro Digital SLR
- Hatch pockets use for avalanche gear is suspect
Overall Rating: 8.5 / 10.0
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