As promised: Digital bags!

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but digital came to me after a really lean spell in photography … no money, no time, invalid wife, etc. etc. So I really hadn't done much with that loverly equipment in the last post, mostly because I couldn't afford film and processing. My daughter and her husband had bought a digital camera, and I was not impressed. Only 2 MPixels, as I remember, and the colour was all funny. I kept reserving my enthusiasm until I suddenly came upon a little (actually, it was kinda bulky by today's standards) Kodak 4MPixel camera, for $100 off the going price/MPixel. I gotta say, it's not often that I have cash in my pocket when I find a bargain, so I bought it. It was a display model, and the 16MB card that was supposed to be with it was gone, so the store gave me a 128MB card for free, and a battery. I got out to the car, opened the package, and took a picture of the store front. I could SEE it! In the little LCD screen! WOW! I was DIGITAL, baby! How to carry the thing around immediately came to mind, and I thought of my little Cherokee belt bag. It fit just great, and I was flying. Here it is; it's on my belt, and those are my pants lying under it (Yeah, I took my pants off for the photo. So sue me.):

"Not bad", I thought, and that bag and cam were constantly on my belt. I took it off for showers and going to bed, but not much else. I used that camera with increasing frequency for a good five years, until my picture files began to get really unwieldy (Ha! You oughta see 'em NOW!). I learned to use Photoshop to make the pictures look right, and that's still going on.
And then the little nagging dissatisfactions began … and, to be honest, I really ached for the kind of flexibility that I'd had with film, so I began casting about for something a step or two above the Kodak, which was almost equivalent to George Eastman's original box camera … "You press the button, we do the rest." I was nosing about for a DSLR when my Scottish Lassie reminded me that all the dust and dirt on the CCD of her Nikon D100 (that I had been taking out of her shots, via Photoshop) came from the changing of lenses, and more importantly, it cost her £100 and a trip to London (from Loch Ness!) to get it cleaned off the CCD itself, the home-cleaning kits not having been invented yet. That put me on my back foot, you can bet! But at just this time, a new "Ultra Zoom" from Olympus came onto the market, with a 1:18 zoom range (from 28mm to 504mm!) and 7.1MPixels, to boot (my Lassie's D100 only had 6MPixels!). Not much need to change lenses in that camera! So, I bought one, online, at a considerable savings over list. Here it is; I shot these the day it came, and the peel-off stickers are still there.
Front:

And the back (Hey, look, Elina and Deb … a viewfinder! LOL):

Sorry … had to rub it in.
Now, this little beastie wouldn't fit into my little waist bag, and even if it had, it was an awkward shape. I finally decided on no bag at all, but rather an elastic harness intended for hunters to carry their binoculars. It holds the camera tightly in the center of my chest, where it looks a little unusual, but it's very handy, and one side can be detached, allowing the camera to dangle under my coat, out of the way. I have no picture except this, which isn't too clear, but I'm using the camera to take the picture:

Yes, it's in a public washroom … I do this whenever I find one with a good mirror. It amuses me.
But, I still wanted a DSLR, especially since the CCDs had started to be protected, the home-cleaning kits were available, and … well, dammit, the Oly was not much good for moving objects, since the viewfinder blacked out when the shutter button was pressed. I got a few birds in flight, but damned few.
So, as in miracle plays, a bunch of money came, totally unexpectedly, and I bought the Nikon. Yeah, I needed a new car … but I always need a new car. The Nikon won. This is what I got:

A Nikon D3100, kit 18mm-55mm zoom lens, and a 55mm-200mm zoom lens. Battery and charger, "flower" shade for the 200mm, Body cap, rear and front lens caps, extra 4GB card, and a bunch of little doodads that seem to be choke coils or something, and a viewfinder cap. The filters (2 1A skylight filters and a polariser) came from my daughter's Nikon FG outfit. That's the Nikon-issue neckstrap, BTW … I covered up the "Steal me!" logo with black marker … it's only here 'til I get something better, then it's landfill time.
The first bag I tried was the bag from my daughter's Nikon FG:


It's kinda big, there's no shoulder strap, and it's bulky. My stuff bashed around in it. The FG was a big outfit … she had at least 4 lenses and a bunch of other stuff, including a flash. And it looked like a camera bag. I like "stealth" camera bags. So, I knew I'd better find something else.
What I settled on was this:

It's a Domke F-5xb, in brown. That diagonal stitching on the flap held a big "DOMKE" label … that came off first, you bet! It's kinda pricey … just under $80 from Amazon, but it seems to deliver. Here it is, open:

Those two dark patches are the loudest Velcro in the world … that's gonna be fixed soon, too. It came with two dividers in olive colour. with Velcro strips to hold them, and boy, do they hold them! This is the arrangement I've settled on:

The vertical one at one end makes a compartment for the long lens, with shade attached. The other divider is actually about an inch off the bottom of the bag, providing a compartment for the filters, the battery charger, and spare battery. The camera with the short lens attached fits on top of the divider. Here, you can see the pocket between the padding and the bag front:

And here you can see the filters peeking out. The battery charger is in there, but not visible:

Stowing the extra caps in the front pocket:

Stowing the misc. doodads:

And the long lens in its cubbyhole:

The camera in place so a quick grip can be achieved, and the camera withdrawn:

Zipped up; the extra card in the outside front pocket:

And the front flap down, hiding everything. Notice the strap; it's adjustable and removable; those two grey stripes are "grippy", I don't know how, but it keeps the bag on my shoulder. If you're some kind of compulsive, there's a "tunnel" on the back that you can thread your belt through.

All in all, I'd have to say that it meets all my criteria … it holds everything I'll need (and then some), it's not too bulky, and it doesn't look like a camera bag.
cheers, all!