Very well built for years of rough use.
Tons of protection for your equipment including padding and weather proofing.
Adjustable harness to fit different torso sizes and maximum comfort.
Customizable inside compartment dividers.
Adjustable tripod center mount.
There is a smaller daypack for the short trips.
Built in rain cover.

A bit heavy
No hydration
No room for anything other than photo gear.
On real treks, you will need a regular backpack or a friend that will carry clothes, food, water and everything else for you.
No outside pockets for small items.

This is a very well built, weather resistant pack with plenty of room to hold all of your equipment safely and securely. The harness is adjustable and padded very well for comfort with very heavy loads and for long trips. There is room for 2 bodies and a good assortment of lenses. This is definitely a great pack if all you have to carry is camera gear and someone else can carry water, extra clothing, food etc.... The pack itself is a bit heavy but not so bad that it would affect my recommendation. I wish this model had a water bladder in it, and a few side pockets for misc items that do not lay flat enough to fit the inside pockets.

Top notch build quality
Build in rain cover
Tons of storage
Easily customized
Great fit, comfortable to wear

Tripod holder on the side makes your load lean to the right
Gets heavy
Can't grab stuff out of the bag quickly when you're carrying it.

I bought this bag because I wanted something with great build quality, and lots of storage. This bag dilivers both. I can easily store 2 EOS bodies with lenses attached, with room for my other 5 lenses, filters, manuals hand warmers, cords, cables, extra batteries, memory cards, film and anything else you can think of throwing in your camera case. This bag can hold everything I want to take on an extended photo trip. I'm sure I could fit my laptop in this bag too, but I have never tried. There is no special, padded sleeve for a laptop on this bag, but there is plenty of room for one if you wanted to add it.

With all that room, and ability to carry everything you need, this bag can get pretty heavy. I once weighed my bag at about 35 pounds, without a tripod. It's great for getting keeping all your gear together, but gets too heavy for long hikes. When hiking, I try to leave this bag at home, or in the car, and take a smaller shoulder bag with just a few items in it. It has a place on the side of the bag to mount a tripod, but I don't use it. I use to use it whan all I had was a cheap, $20 tripod from a big box store. It is very light, and fit's easliy on the side. The Manfroto 3021BPro w/ 488RC2 ballhead is too heavy to cary on the side of the bag. It will mount there jut fine, but all that extra weight on one side really throws off the ballance. A place in the center of the bag to mount the tripod would be much better. Most of the time tho, I mound one body to the tripod, and carry it over my shoulder. This also helps to lighten the load inside the bag.

This bag is easily custimizable to fit your storage needs. There are lots of padding, and dividers so you can make just about any configuration you need to, to make sure your gear fits properly and securely.

You don't even realize this bag has a built in rain cover stashed in the bottom of it, until you need it. I have used it on several occasions to keep my gear dry.

I am in the market for a smaller bag, and after using this one for a few years, I do not plan on getting another pack pack style bag. This bag is great for getting your gear from one place to another, but not so great for those times when you need to grab something from your bag quickly.

The bag fits well, and is very comfortable to carry, thankd to the wide, padded shoulder straps and waist belt. I would expect nothing less from this company.

Customer Service

Never had to contact them.

Similar Products Used:

LowePro TLZ AW
Cheap Targa pack pack

Exceptional quality Excellent protection and very flexible divider system. Very roomy. Tripod carrying cradle Quite comfy and can be adjusted for different body sizes. Space for light clothing

Weight - much heavier than expected and no prior information on wieght available. (A good example of store tryout and purchase beating mail/internet order hands down.) Size and bulk - It's worth checking if the smaller trekkers might better meet your needs. (There's also an even bigger one!) Cost (since I'm not getting the use out of it, I may have a jaundiced view on this) The soft loop internal lining is rather baggy and saggy and isn't securely fastened to the outer protective foam shell. Things improve once the dividers are in place. Very bulky when the harness is zipped out of sight. If carrying by it's handles you need to keep the harness on the outside.

I find I no longer use the Lowepro Photo Trekker as much as I used to. It has no faults as such: it's beatifully made and does exactly what it's supposed to do and will probably continue to so over a very long life. The reason I use it less and less is because I've found that it's not quite as convenient as I thought it would be when I bought it. I enjoy photographing in relatively hard to get to places which means, apart from the photo gear I need, I often have to carry a small tent, sleeping bag and cooking gear. The combined weight of my Kodak DCS 14n, 18-35mm and 70-200mm zooms, panorama gear and a Manfrotto Carbon One with Markins head is already enough to be going on with. The camping kit takes the total payload into the 'what kind of nutcase are you to want to carry this much gear around' kind of territory. The Photo Trekker can't really carry anything other than what it's designed for, so camping is not an option and as for it's weight !!!! Well that was quite a surprise. It breaks all the rules and in my opinion really is just too d*med heavy to be of use in the kind of situations in which I find myself. So now I carry my gear strapped to the outside of my Osprey Aether lightweight backpack. The Kodak SLR (with either of the zooms fitted) goes across my chest in a LowePro Topload Zoom Pro AW (modified to mate with the Osprey straps) and I strap the padded lens case that came with the PhotoTrekker (see: it DOES get a look-in!)on to the side of the pack and this carries my other lenses. It balances nicely with the tripod on the oppsite side. I've also modified the Osprey waist belt to take LowePro SlipLock cases on each side to carry panorama and other bits. I may look like an over-loaded Christmas tree but it works and my knees are still bearing up. Even if I'm not planning to overnight in the wild I still prefer my Osprey/LowePro hybrid rig to the Phototrekker, not only for weight reasons but also because the Osprey is more comfortable on a long trek. So why 5 out of 5? Well, for most users there probably isn't anything better out there. It's extremely well made and totally professional in what it sets out to provide. Short of a full immersion, it will provide all the protection you could hope for and comes with loads of velcro- fixable dividers. The pull-out rain cover works well and handles on the top and side mean you can carry your kit like luggage with the harness bits tidied up behind a zip-round travel cover. The tripod cradle does its job fine and the two 16 inch long accessory cases (one padded & divided, one not)provide strap-on capacity if you need it. The harness is adjustable and reasonably comfortable but at over ten pounds (4.7Kilos) the Photo Trekker might be too heavy for its own good. It's a pity that the folks at Lowepro don't specify the weight of their products.

Customer Service

No problems have arisen

Similar Products Used:

Lowepro Orion AW (this is a beltpack case made to professional standards, together with a top-mounting daypack for short trecks) I use this more often than the Photo Trekker but not as often as my Osprey/Lowepro hybrid outfit.

Builf quality Capacity

Kinda heavy

This is an awesome product. It is a bit bigger than I expected - I have 2 SLR bodies, a 70-200L, three wide-mid lenses and a couple of small primes and there is still room left over. It is very substantial and fairly heavy. It has great accessories like the tripod holder and a built-in rain cover thingy. Harness is excellent, quality is also great. I reckon you could almost check it in on a flight and your gear would be fine (you'd almost need to coz it's such a big bugger).

Customer Service

good

Similar Products Used:

Kathmandu photo backpack