Friday, July 13, 2012

REVIEW: Think Tank Photo Airport 4-Sight


Think Tank Photo Airport 4-Sight

The trend in travel rollers for the last several years has been a design that offers four wheels that rotate 360 degrees so you can push, pull or turn your bag in its full upright position without having it flip over on its side. This is a great design for getting through busy airports and city streets with your luggage, so the question that comes to mind while using these bags is “why can’t my camera bag do this?”. Well the answer is that now they can!

This bag is smaller than my Airport TakeOff that I prefer to use when travelling, but when I saw those lovely 360 roller wheels I knew it’d be my first choice for my next trip. It took me a couple of months, but I finally got my chance to travel with this bag over the 4th of July holidays – and loved it!

A Peek Inside

Let’s take a peek inside at one of the possible configurations:


Handy Pouch with support for a 70-200mm f/2.8L (with hood extended is possible)

This configuration is similar to how I like to carry my gear in other bags, so it’s basically what I ended up with as you can see of this shot inside of my bag:

The cool thing about this configuration was that I was able to have my 5D Mark III ready to go with the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens on with the hood in the forward facing ready position (as opposed to the inverted position in the shot). In the photo above I have my 8-15mm lens in front of my 70-200mm, but if I remove it then I can easily have my hood extended and my camera ready to go. I really liked this when I was out in the field with this bag.

The pouch on the inside was handy, but honestly I’d rather a zipper pocket on the outside. For security reasons some might find this more desirable, but not not me since I always carry my bag on the plane. This makes it really hard to get something out of your bag like a pen or business card.

I was also disappointed that this was the first TTP bag I’ve ever owned that doesn’t have a business card holder on the top? I don’t quite understand what was up with that one, but that’s something to keep in mind as you might want to go with the security tag as the free gift with this bag.

Video Review

Here’s a little video walkthrough I did of this bag that contains information not found elsewhere in this article:


Play in HD

Conclusion

I love the 360 rotating roller wheels on this bag and hope to see them show up on other bags. I do wish they were a bit more beefy wheels that had the same solid design as the non-360 wheels found on the other Think Tank Photo rollers (or like you’d find on Samsonite bags). I’m also super disappointed in the missing business card slot and external pockets, but those quibbles aside I can see myself trying to use this bag more often simply because of its 360 wheels.

Special Offer

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More Think Tank Photo Reviews

Visit this page or scroll the Gear Reviews list on the right side of the blog to see more of my reviews of Think Tank Photo products.

 

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Disclosure

I was provided with a review unit of this bag, and I may make a commission if you make a purchase using links found on this blog.

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