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.
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.
