Let’s face it when you arrive at a job on your own; you need to be focused and organised. However, as more of us use Mirrorless, DSLR and video production cameras, there’s been a tendency to scrap the old-style flight and Peli cases in favour of smaller lighter weight camera backpacks.
The problem is these backpacks while great for stills, with their multiple pockets and dividers, just aren’t suited for jobbing videographers.
You need your kit to be perfectly laid out, protected and as near to ready to go as possible when you arrive on location. Ideally, you need the bag with you at all times so your valuable kit can be placed back inside quickly if needed, particularly between shoots on location, without needing to disassemble each time.
It’s this size and space that the Tenba Cinelux 24 offers, and while it might not be large enough to hold the tripods you’ll need, everything else from audio to lighting will fit neatly inside.
Through the duration of the test, I used the bag to hold and transport, one Canon C100 MKII with 24-70mm, a RODE NTG4+, Tascam DR-40, ATOMOS Ninja V, Rotolight AEOS, Nisi 95mm VND and a variety of cables.
This is quite a bit of kit, and it all fitted inside with amazing neatness.
The two end pockets give plenty of space for spare batteries, Matte Box filters and other odds and ends. The large front pocket holds the cables, and the large centre section takes everything else.
Aside from removing the Ninja V when the camera was packed into the bag, I left the lens and Mic attached to the C100 in transport.
I made a few slight alterations to the internal layout, but nothing too far beyond how it was when it arrived, essentially using the larger divides to hold the AEOS and several Berenstargh V-Lock batteries. The Flexi divider made a space for the Atomos leaving the camera neatly positioned in the centre.
Arriving at a job, it’s usually a case of delving through a couple of bags to locate all the bits and pieces needed for the set-up. Here, as the camera was left almost completely set-up, all I needed to do was link in the Atomos and pop everything on a tripod ready for the shoot.
The large opening of the Cinelux 24 enables easy access to lift the camera directly out, and due to the size of the bag, it created a good platform to leave shooting scripts and blocking diagrams ontop.
I found that fully loaded the bag was best transported with a trolly although there are two sturdy handles if you do want to lift it. During a couple of shoots where stairs were involved the shoulder strap was used extensively when going up and down levels. This offered the padding needed to carry the bag some distance and two smaller handles made the bag easy to move in all situations.
As bags for video go, there was very little to fault. It works well as a way of protecting and transporting your kit. If I was to fault anything then I’d like to see the addition of one or two small zipped pockets inside the two end pockets. These smaller pockets would give you a couple of secure locations to keep memory cards, keys and cards.
When it comes to outright performance this bag is above and beyond anything else I have used in the past. I would highly recommend this for larger video rigs, where you want to transport everything in one bag. Except for the tripods obviously.
