I really would like to see a huge ship passing through the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas bridge. Could make for a great photo :)

This is a long exposure, taken with a 10 stop ND filter (Formatt-Hitech firecrast filter). Single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Recently I changed to a new phone, and together with it I also got the Gear VR headset. So of course I wanted to try it out also with my own photos, but I did not really had any. So today I went to get some new 360 shots, and here is one of them. You can look around in it a little further down in this post, or if you have a VR headset, you can download the source image and view it directly.

For the Gear VR, you just have to:
– connect your phone to a PC
– find the Oculus folder in the root of the phone storage
– create a 360Photos folder, if it’s not there
– copy the photo into the folder
– put the phone into the headset, and open the Oculus 360 Photos app
– choose See all from the first selection and the My photos from the second
– choose the 360Photos folder and choose the photo you want to view

I have no idea how to do it in other VR headsets, as I only have the Gear VR, but I think it will be similar.

Here you can see the whole 360 panorama, created from 4 shots (8mm fish-eye lens). Edited in Lightroom, PTgui, Photoshop and Pano2VR.

And here you can look around in it. Just use your mouse to drag the view around and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

I really like this style of composition. Having the lamp included give the photo a very nice foreground element. One just has to be very careful not to catch many lens flares from the lamp, as that really easy, especially with strong laps as the ones in Amsterdam.

This is mostly a single exposure, with a second one used to darken few areas. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

I had to add so much noise to the sky here, just to get rid of as much color banding as I could. The lights in the Eiffel tower create quite a strong glow around it, especially with low clouds as there were the evening I took this. I could see the color banding already on the camera screen. It would be so nice if we finally moved to 16-bit images, and of course 16-bit screen, to get rid of this, and make pictures looking so much better.

This is a two shot vertorama, with two additional shots used to darken few highlights on the tower.

Few months ago I posted my first impressions of the Everyday Messenger Bag. Today, after quite a lot of use of it, I will give you more thoughts on it, how it’s in general use and what I like, don’t like and what’s missing.

Using it

I found the Everyday Messenger to be very comfortable in normal use. I prefer shoulder bags and the wide strap is great in use. As I mentioned before, I had to take it off, together with the waist straps, and turn them around, to be able to use the bag on the left shoulder. But doing this was very easy and took only few minutes. A small clip to keep the straps shape where it’s attached would be really welcomed, but one can get by also without it.

The wide strap is great

A clip to keep the shape would be nice

Carrying a tripod

Carrying a tripod with the bag is easy, and my Gitzo fits perfectly. I ended up connecting the provided rubber band (which is used tho keep the tripod legs together) to the key strap, to avoid loosing it, and I also keep it in the place that is for the keys. I think it works better like this. I would probably loose the band by now if i didn’t do it like this.

Tripod attached to the bag

Attached rubber band

Capacity

The capacity is great when you are using one camera with up to three lenses in it (I mean full frame DSLR lenses, as those I use). I tried to put in more, but than the top ones are right on the edge of the bag, and I believe they could fall out when I open the flap. Secondly, having the lenses on top of each other makes taking them out much harder. For my last trip I needed to take 4 lenses and 2 camera bodies with me, and there was the Everyday Messanger Bag, just too small for it.

There are a lot of places for small items, but none for medium sized items. For instance, I ended up keeping the Formatt Hitech filters in the tablet pouch, but I had no space for the filter holder. In the end I bought a small bag for that, and I just keep it in the main compartment, which is not that great. I could keep it in the field pouch, but I don’t want to carry it just for that. I had the same problem with my last bag, and I still wish the creators would add an inside square bag, that would take up the space of one lens and could be closed off. Something the size of the lens pouches Sigma provides, just attached by velcro to the inside. .

Not much room for second row

I miss something like this

I also don’t understand why there is no way to simply attach the Field pouch to the outside of the bag. There are two attachments on the back of the pouch, so adding the opposite attachments to the cover of the Everyday messenger bag would probably be quite a small change and it would add to the capacity and usability quite a lot.

Back side

I carried the Surface Pro 4 in the computer space, and while it fits nicely, the whole area bulges out a little when the the bag is full, which I don’t like so much when there is a tablet inside. The whole back could be a bit more sturdier, for the bag to keep the shape better. Here is actually also my biggest problem with the bag. Since the back is not sturdy enough, it bends in one area regardless of how I carry it. This makes it sometime harder to unzip, and I fear it could lead to damage in the area after longer use. There is none by now, and I just hope it stays that way.

The back bulges out a bit

The bag bends in this area

Durability

I noticed no damage or manufacturing problems on my bag. All is as it was the first day I got it.

Overall

Even if this review maybe sounds more negative, don’t be mistaken, this is a great bag. I just went through the good parts more in the first impressions article. This is more what I observed during my use, and how it think this great bag could be made even better.

It’s currently my favorite bag, and I have no problems recommending it, as I think you will also like it. You can find more about it on the Peak Design website.