Paddling and Photography – how to make electronics and backcountry paddling trips mix

    I'm into landscape and nature photography and take many photos during my backcountry paddling trips, both for the beauty of the landscape or the moment itself, and also as sort of a photo journal for the trip and what the area looks like.    For the on the water shots, I use my trusty Panasonic TS2 waterproof tough camera.  Back about 5 years ago, I used to go through 2 or 3 of these ultracompact cameras a season as I kept getting them wet in one way or another, and waterproof cameras didn’t exist at the time.  I kept it in an otterbox strapped to my kayak deck.  Nowadays it’s all good with the ubiquitous waterproof tough camera.

      The photos that come out of the Panasonic camera are great for on the water, but I do prefer to have my SLR on land, for the depth of field, quality, resolution and low light performance it offers.  But, bringing something that costs that much with you where there’s water all about, and the possibility of getting all your gear soaked is very high can send shivers down some photographers spines.  I looked around at all of the options available for waterproof containers for my camera and I found a great solution with the Lowepro Dryzone 200.

     Firstly, I like to have my SLR accessible during shore stops, lunch, portages, etc.  when on paddling trips so burying it in a drybag in a dry pack doesn’t work for me, not to mention, there is not much protection against crushing, rubbing, etc.  I also wouldn’t want to just strap a typical drybag to the deck or put it in the bottom of a canoe, as I don’t trust 100% any dry bag to be sealed properly.  I could have also used an otterbox, but they are very bulky, square, and don’t have any proper straps for when I need to portage.

      I bought a LoweproDryzone 200 backpack about 5 years ago – it was the only type of purpose built water protection for cameras that is also carry friendly at the time, and still is, as far as I can tell.  It consists of an inner pod, what they call a drypod, which is essentially a PVC watertight casing with a drysuit zipper from a german company named tizip. The bag  comes with a variety of Velcro dividers you can configure any way you would like to, so you can separate lenses, filters, cameras and accessories.  It’s big enough to carry my D600 with 28-300 lens attached, and maybe one or even two more medium/large SLR lens would fit in it as well.  The drypod is attached to a nylon outer backpack shell with loops around the case and some wire.  But, I have since taken the drypod out of the backpack shell and just use the case itself.  The reason why I did that was the shell made it harder to access the contents as I would have to undo another nylon clip in addition to opening up the zipper, the shell is also heavy and soaks up water making it wet all the time and even heavier, and the shell does add some extra non-protected storage, but not all that much, for all the downsides it has.  The shell itself weighs 3 pounds, seriously.  And that is when it's dry.  There's no use for it for my needs.

  The full Dryzone 200.  I just ditched the outer nylon shell and use the inner drypod bag.

     When kayaking, I thread some bungees directly through the loops around the drypod base and attach it to my deck lines on the rear of my kayak.  It is easily attached this way, and is awesomely accessible when I get out of my kayak.  When canoeing, I just place the drypod on the bottom of the cane in front of me…  once in a while I will take it out of the case for some photos while on the water, but not very often.  I generally use it for all of my electronics while on a trip – batteries, phone, filters, etc, and sometimes even put my toiletries kit or a book in there for dryness and ease of access.

     The one downside of using just the drypod itself is the lack of straps for portaging.  I have used the bungies themselves many times to act as backpack straps, but it isn’t quite ideal, although it is manageable.  My last rip, I didn’t have the bungie configuration the best configuration, and I did pull one of the attachment loops off of the base.  Basically the glue gave way on the attachment loop itself, it didn’t tear a hole in the outside.  I am going to look into getting some aftermarket PVC attachment points and some glue to mount some attachments for just some simple backpack straps to make this this ideal for my needs as a paddling drypod for my SLR.

     As for keeping water out itself, it is rated for IPX7 which means it is submersible.  It comes with a small tube of silicone grease to keep the Tizipzipper lubricated and sealed properly, as is used with drysuit zippers.  I have done rolls in my kayak with it, and there is no issue.  There is one caveat though.  You must make sure you do the zipper all the way up.  One trip to the French River I was lining my kayak down some rapids and the kayak flipped over, putting the drypod in the water.  I wasn’t concerned at all about the water and took my time righting the kayak.  Then I realized I hadn’t done the zipper up all the way, it was about 2 inches open, and there was some water in my bag.  The water  did mess up the electronics inside the Nikon D300 that I had at the time.  Luckily I was able to recover $700 by selling it as a water damaged item on eBay at the time.  So now, I make sure double check the zipper before putting in with the bag.

     The Dryzone 200 inner drypod is very functional and I think it is the most useful product out there to take your SLR camera gear on backcountry paddling trips.  The outer backpack shell is somewhat useful, but I prefer to use the drypod without the outer shell.  My only complaint is it is very pricey for what it is.  I wish that Lowepro would make a different version to sell of this – just the inner drypod with just two shoulder straps attached directly to it, without the outer shell  to reduce the price.

LoweproDryzone 200

Tizip