Jon Sienkiewicz

A certifiable ton of camera bags crossed our workbench in 2019. Here’s a look at our 7 favorites.

We’ve all covered the front of a lens with sandwich wrap or a nylon stocking and created a DIY special effects filter at one time or another. Maybe you’ve even smeared an old UV or Skylight with Vaseline or crayon wax to produce creative distortion. Cool, no? Well, those are NOTHING compared to the incredible optical tricks you can do with the new Omni Creative Filter System from Lensbaby.

Three very different, very exciting camera bags—one shoulder, one photo backpack and one waist pack. Considering the variety of clever designs, abundance of high quality materials and outright affordability, there’s probably never been a better time to buy a camera bag. (Except maybe during that two-year period back in the middle of the Pleistocene epoch when cheap Diprotodon skin from Australia was flooding the market…)

Kittens become cats, pigeons target sports cars and hard drives fail. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst—buy a plug-in external hard drive for your precious images or for a loved one. They are so simple to use that even an adult can manage on the first try, and they are so affordable that you’ll kick yourself if you fail to backup your photo files (and other important data) because your hard drive will fail. Just like that cuddly, cute kitten will soon become a smug adult cat that ignores you except when you’re in the middle of something urgent.