LowePro puts camera bag through serious abuse, pops some bubbly to celebrate its success

 

 

Ever wondered whether your camera bag is giving your expensive gear as much protection as you'd hope? Bag maker LowePro has just published a video testing out the Pro Roller X-Series AW camera bag that may provide some reassurance. In the clip, the company's representatives are seen dropping, throwing and kicking the bag -- even towing it behind a pickup truck. All along, a bottle of champagne and glasses contained within remain intact.

Sure, it's perhaps not the most realistic of tests. Champagne doesn't contain sensitive moving parts, or have finely-machined components combined at tight tolerances, after all, and the bottle is safely cocooned in an otherwise mostly-empty bag with lots of shock-absorbing space around its periphery.

Still, it's fairly impressive that a soft bag is capable of taking even this level of punishment, and it's not like you're going to subject your cameras and lenses to the same treatment. (Or at least, not without expecting a repair bill.) Clips like these shouldn't be taken in the literal sense, but more as a demonstration that you should be confident of your gear surviving the more minor knocks and bumps it will face in day-to-day use.

LowePro's video isn't the first such we've seen. Hard-case makers Pelican and HPRC have both published some spectacular tests of their cases surviving high-speed impacts and drops onto concrete from multiple storeys, and the folks at Hong Kong-based DigitalRev TV posted a two-part camera bag durability test last year. These torture test videos are more common with hard cases, or as a third-party test, though -- we can't remember a soft-bag maker providing a similarly-tough demonstration of their equipment.

(via WPPI Online)