About that Ari Marcopoulos Camera Bag

Q: What do Ari Marcopoulos and Iron Maiden have in common?
A: They are more famous for apparel than media.

Ok, that’s probably not true, at least with regard to Ari, but most buyers of camera bags never will have heard of him — or at best will have confused the super-adventurous-street-photographer with Costa Manos of Magnum. Ari’s work is great (as I would expect after 40 years of shooting), and it pushes a lot of boundaries that frankly need to be pushed, but one real work of his genius is designing a camera bag.

First, let’s dispense with the cutesy Incase video. Not all of that stuff fits in one of these bags, unless you just randomly toss things in and try to zip it up. Also, watching Ari wander into a pond in knee-length shorts might give you this icky voyeuristic feeling. Or watching a golf swing with a messenger bag tightly strapped on might make you experience psychosomatic feelings of suffocation.

Features/Benefits

Let’s go point by point on the major features/benefits and detriments. If you like Nava Design briefcases, backpacks, and other things, you will love this bag —because the aesthetics are a dead ringer for the Dot Com 2.0 line (or maybe vice versa).

Also, contrary to what one reviewer said, the Ari bag does look like a diaper bag, at least the type they design to make men less reluctant to carry diaper bags. In fact, all camera bags now look like diaper bags. Compare your favorite bag to the Skip-Hop one on the left or the Fisher-Price in the center. Or the Diaper Dude one on the right. “Diaper Dude.” Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

But enough diversions. On to the countdown of benefits!

1. Reasonable cargo capacity. You can drop a Fuji 6×9 in no problem – so long as it does not have an external viewfinder attached. Also takes a Rolleiflex with no problem. Obviously also fits a Leica or two.

2. Not ballistic nylon. Grey canvas. Incase has figured out — unlike Domke — that canvas is best put on the outside and that something less abrasive is better on the inside.

3. Plenty of padding. The other thing that is infuriating about Domke is the banging around of equipment. Unless of course you use a padded insert – which pretty mich defeats the whole purpose of a Domke in the first place. The Ari at least has some soft stuff inside.

4. Light colored interior. Not hard to see things. Nowhere for small parts to hide.

5. No decoration. Well, save for a cute step-wedge on the back. The color of the bag might qualify as a good neutral grey for color-balancing purposes.

6. Virtually no labeling on the bag. You can’t read Ari’s signature, and the word Ari (on a small fabric tag) looks like a manufacturer’s label.

7. Zips from the top. This is quieter and more convenient than the flap-over nightmares. Also naturally stays open when unzipped, which is helpful for inserting and removing equipment without scratching.

8. Strap that is adjustable for length while you are wearing it. Really easy – pull the plain metal buckle to tighten, pull the metal buckle with the fabric attachment to loosen. Note this; this bag does not come with directions explaining that.

9. Tripod strap on the bottom. If you bicycle, this can hold an air pump.

10. Slot for an iPad. The furry inner pocket of this does not hold a full-size tablet, but the slot itself does.

Not sure about these things:

1. Grab handle on the side. This is useful provided that your cameras are not going to jump the partitions inside the case if the case is turned 90 degrees. But better than nothing if you want to tie the bag down or pull it off a carry-on bin shelf.2. Rain cover. Not sure because it is something no one will admit to using on account of its, ahem, unique design. Many report using it inside-out. By the way, when you buy the bag, the cover is hidden in a bottom zippered compartment that is very easy to miss.3. Point-and-shoot pocket. If your p/s camera is a thin one that is somehow not going to lose its nice finish by being repeatedly dragged through a […] dentata, the point and shoot pocket serves its intended function. The zippered opening under the magnetic flat is too narrow for any but the thinnest cameras, let alone your hand. Some tests:

• Olympus Stylus Epic (mju 1) (tiny p/s): reasonable fit if you shield the camera from the zipper with your hand
• Yashica T4 Super (midsize p/s): same; a little more snug
• Contax TVS (midsize p/s): gold finish will not be there long
• Canon Sure Shot Multi Tele (fat f/s): no way
• Canon Sure Shot 120 Caption (fat p/s): no way
• Konica Hexar AF (full-size): for the love of God, man, think of what you are doing!

Yet it does have some advantages unrelated to its stated purpose: you could run headphone wires out of it easily, as well as pull your wallet out. But keeping your wallet in a piece of luggage might actually cross the thin line between a camera bag and a man-purse.

Room for Improvement:

1. Set in its ways. It is no secret that Ari designed this bag for his own use – as the video states. It is designed around a Canon 5D, a Leica film rangefinder (as you can see from Incase’s product shot, a Contax G2 has to stand in), and a compact camera (from the looks of it in the video – in the stock photo below, the compact camera is replaced by two rolls of film, an iPhone, and a Moleskine). Other configurations work, but the two removable dividers and the point-and-shoot pocket can only be removed, not repositioned!

The second picture is a real-world load of this bag, showing a chrome-plated Fuji G690BL (don’t ask…), 100/3.5AE lens, 50mm lens and an extra 72mm filter, and a Fuji X100 (looking like a fetal G690BL…). To the left you see a pro-pack of TMY 120. The “point and shoot” pocket holds Sekonic L-358 meter and a Tascam DR-40 audio recorder. The upper zipper pocket holds a spare X100 battery and a 50mm viewfinder.

Here’s another, showing a 2.8GX Rolleiflex (sporting a 2.8F viewfinder/reflex hood…), Leica M typ 240, and SF 58 flash in the main part, a Leica battery and TMY120 in the side pockets, a Rollei E46 filter adapter in the top pocket, and a Tascam and 46mm filters in the point-and-shoot pocket. Now think, with an M10, you could fit an extra folded up piece of A4 paper in the extra 3mm you would have!

2. Uno strap senso unico. The strap only has one direction: worn on the left shoulder, crossing over the body. This is important to remember because there is no double shoulder pad to cover right-shoulder use (in the photo below, you can see that the second pad cannot be moved because it is sewnin place). The orientation also puts the grab handle on the wrong side of the bag. I tested the “wrong” orientation, and indeed it is unconfortable compared to the “correct” one. On a 10-mile pleasure bike ride, this bag with 8 pounds of equipment in it is actually pretty uncomfortable on the shoulder. Part of this comes from the seat-belt-style shoulder strap. It’s a great material, but where right-shoulder use does not have a pad that wraps over the shoulder, the web part of the strap ends up digging into your shoulder.

3. Missing stabilizer. One place where Crumpler wipes the floor with other brands is in the use of a stabilizer strap that helps keep a fully loaded bag from swinging around and hitting the handlbars. Although you can mitigate some of this with the Ari by tightening up the straps, it is still capable of swinging around on you. It can also work its way to being at angles where it might lost stuff out the top if unzipped.

Conclusion

All joking aside, the Ari Marcopolous bag is fairly nice, especially at its closeout price of $120. It is a little quirky and is the kind of thing you would want to buy with a return privilege. Just in case you and Ari are not on the same page.