Crumpler 7 Million Dollar Home Shoulder Bag for DSLR Camera, Black/Gunmetal

2013-08-13T21:00:00

Great bag. I have the 5d mark III, 24-70mm 2.8 II, 70-200mm 2.8 IS II, 100mm Macro 2.8 IS and a 600EX-RT. it all fits, but it can be a little tight. It has a nice amount of pockets, but can't fit an iPad in the back zippered compartment. One can fit in the front, but some may find that hard to work with. Over all this is the best messenger bag I have ever used.

HEATH K.

2013-05-10T21:00:00

I own a Crumpler Six Million Dollar ($6m) camera bag. I gave it a five star rating, and it´s my go-to bag for my Nikon D300 with one lens mounted, three additional lenses, and an SB800 flash. I have at least one of every other major camera bag brand – Domke, Lowe Pro, Tamrac, Tenba, Think Tank. Crumpler wins hands down on the most solid basics: • The king of compactness. Crumpler bags seem bigger inside than outside. Only Domke comes close to packing so much equipment into so small a space, but with much less protection. • Safety. Crumpler bags seal so tight, with such good padding, that only a hard case can give more protection. • A great, wide shoulder strap with the best hang angle. Crumpler bags stick to the front or back of your hip, tilt forward just a little for easy access, yet present minimum danger of equipment falling out. • The best handle in the industry. This underrated feature is key for me. As the bag gets heavier, a handle that´s solidly a part of the bag and allows the least effort in moving it around gets more and more important. Too many other manufacturers undercut otherwise great bags with afterthought strap handles that latch onto shoulder strap attachment points or are sewn onto the middle of the top flap. These kinds of hand straps deform a loaded bag when it is picked up, making one-handed maneuvering difficult. Crumpler´s weakness has always been a lack of small pocket detailing: no special compartments for all the little things, which Tenba, Think Tank and Tamrac excell at. This is a minor issue for me; I use memory card and filter wallets and stationary store zippered plastic pencil bags for the small stuff. The Crumpler $6m bag is too small for my big equipment: a Nikon D700 with a battery grip (bigger than the D3 and D4), the older, bigger 70-200mm f2.8 zoom, plus 20-35mm and 35-70mm zooms, a manual 50mm f1.2., and SB900 and SU 800 flash units. So I thought it would be a no-brainer to get the Crumpler $7m. In my online browsing, I noticed that Crumpler has a new line of bags in the $4m to $7m Home range, available only in the navy blue / rust red and gunmetal gray / black color combinations. Differences apparent in online research were: • A different velcro closure on the main flap, with a single central velcro patch instead of two outside edge velcro strips. • Elimination of the big underside-of-the-main-flap transparent pocket. • A new rear pocket, which a U-Tube video said was big enough to hold an iPad. • A strap system for attaching a small trípod on the outside of the bag. I ordered and have received the new version gunmetal gray / black Crumpler $7m from Adorama. Shipment service was great, but I am ambivalent about changes to the bag by Crumpler. The good: • The bag is super-light next to the $6m, due to a new, thinner padding material that still gives good protection while allowing more room for equipment inside the bag. • The front trípod straps are great for my big nonopod. • All my main equipment fits beautifully, not too loose, not too tight. The extra two inches of depth over the $6m let the flap close over the 70-200 f2.8 without a top bulge. Nothing is in danger of spilling out, and the extra width and depth handle three 77mm diameter lenses, two with hoods reversed, easily. I use a trick of crazy-gluing two Nikon rear lens caps back-to-back, as a very effective way to stack two short or medium-length lenses into one camera bag slot. For the bottom lens, this gives much faster access than using padded flaps for separation. The bad: • The little velcro patch on the underside of the main flap doesn´t reach its anchor point on the front of the bag when loaded, because of the thickness of the bag with the equipment inside. I´ll get this fixed by sewing additional velcro patches towards the inside bottom middle edge of the flap, which will reach the velcro anchor patch on the front of the bag. But what a bummer, to have to fix such an obvious design flaw in a brand-new bag of this caliber. This defect undoes one of the biggest advantages in my Crumpler $6m bag, a dual closing system in which the velcro is in vertical strips along the two outside edges of the flap, so that the velcro alone gives a solid seal. With this new model $7m bag, the only dependable closure is with the plastic buckles. The velcro is just an afterthought to keep the flap down. • Two flat inside side pockets on either side of the main compartment have been eliminated. These pockets were often criticised in customer reviews as too thin for practical use when the bag was full, but in my $6m bag I get good value out of them for my filter and CF card wallets. In my Crumpler $7m, these wallets have to move to the front pocket, where they compete for room with other stuff. • The new back pocket, contrary to what the U-Tube video said, is too shallow to hold an iPad. Also, the back of the bag gets tight when the bag is full. Even if the new back pocket was deep enough, unless expansion gussets are added, nobody in his right mind would try to shoehorn a delicate iPad screen into such a tight fit. I ended up using the back pocket for flexible plastic flash modifiers that lay flat, the same use I give to the pocket under the main flap in the $6m. This afterthought rear pocket that´s not deep enough or roomy enough for an iPad is the biggest missed opportunity in the new Crumpler Seven Million Dollar Home bag. A gusseted, lightly padded rear pocket big and deep enough for an iPad would have made the bag sensational. Because it continues to incorporate the solid Crumpler advantages detailed at the start of this review, my Crumpler Seven Million Dollar Home is a great bag. But I´m disappointed at the trade-offs between the old and new designs. I´ve come to admire Crumpler as an offbeat, purist company firmly focused on top quality. I hope that this change to a new $7m Home line, in which they give less (pockets and weight) for a higher price, is not an indicador that Crumpler has been infected with bottom-line-itis at the customer´s expense. So, what´s my call between the old and new design Crumpler $7m bags? Unless you´re obsessed with every gram of weight, IMHO the older model bag with its superior closure system, inside side pockets, lower price and more varied choice of color combinations provides better value. Even so, I´m sure I will find it easy to live with my new model Crumpler Seven Million Dollar Home camera bag.

FERNANDO Q.