Hi everyone,

For years now I’ve steadily been pursuing my quest for my own Holy Grail, that is to get my gear down to the lightest and most compact setup that I can achieve. In addition to my small camera bag and small sized camera gear such as my PEN-F camera and a few lenses, my Lumix 12-32mm, 35-100mm zooms and two faster Lumix prime lenses, my 14mm f/2.5 and 20m f/1.7 there are other items that I like to carry that can’t all be accommodated in such as small bag such as one of my small dual-port USB power banks, a couple of USB charge cables, one of my small USB camera battery chargers, my USB data logger and a small USB rechargeable pen torch (surprising how often this comes in useful) 🙂 and other somewhat bulkier items that I feel “obliged” to carry such as my mobile phone. Normally I stuff these into various jacket pockets but this isn’t ideal for a hot day, like yesterday, when I want to go out dressed for the weather wearing a T.Shirt and a pair of shorts and not encumbered by extra clothing worn solely for the purpose of accommodating these items. I don’t want to be a slave to my camera gear, I want it to serve me and not vice-versa!.

Some while back I bought one of those small MOLLE pouches, intentionally to house a small camera such as my TG5 and a couple of spare batteries. The camera bag has a grab handle on the back and I hit on the idea of putting these items into the pouch and attaching it through the grab handle on the back of the bag. It works very well, of course the pouch is still detachable and could be put onto a belt if one wished or even hang from a lanyard or suchlike as it has a loop on the top. The MOLLE pouch has two good-sized zip up compartments each with a separate smaller pouch pocket, a front compartment with a buckle clip into which I have put a 2-port USB power bank and also a pen sized pocket for my torch.

Thanks to the beauty of USB charging I can charge a camera battery and/or my torch, my phone or my datalogger in-situ, on the go, perfect!. 🙂 I’ve also almost finished standardising on small rubber collapsible screw-in lens hoods for some of my lenses as they’re so compact can be left fitted and take up less room in the bag. The 14mm, 20mm and 35-100mm lenses all share a 46mm filter thread which is also useful for interchanging filters.

Kind regards

Leigh