While recently lauding/lamenting Cotopaxi's rare stylish travel backpack, I was struck by how few options there are for slick packs that accommodate bulky cameras and travel necessities without losing EDC appeal. Options for sturdy carry alls tend towards sack-like hiking packs, dorky extra-padded equipment bags, or going Full Messenger with overbuilt strap-crazy packs. Giant packs are awesome for single use purposes, but when traveling or working it can be a bummer to dig a single important item out of the bottom of a deep bag.
Boundary's solution? Just hide your camera bag in the side of a normal backpack.
The Boundary Prima system is currently blowing the heck up on Kickstarter, but it does a lot more than most "innovative" pack prototypes. This system rests on an expandable 25-30 liter commuter backpack, built with heavily vetted eco-conscious Bluesign materials, ergonomic straps, and smart weather-resistant features you'd actually want in a daily use pack. There are a grip of pockets, several lined with particularly soft materials to reduce screen scratching. It even comes with a removable padded and storage-added laptop sleeve.
They add a helpful user-friendly vertical zipper, distinctive metal hardware, and smart compression strap placements. Perhaps most importantly, to really feature-pack the pack the Prima nests a specialized "Verge Case" camera bag that can be side accessed, or unsnapped and used separately. To really drive the point home, you can remove the backpack's waist strap for use as a shoulder strap on the camera bag.
The bottom of the Verge Case unzips to provide more storage, and the backpack's side pockets and compression straps can stow tripods and other longer gear.
I had my reservations about covering another Kickstarter bag project - there are so many ways for these prototypes to come up short IRL - but after a stellar review by the eagle eyed folks at Carryology I had to admit that the design is pretty special.
Is it the "best modular backpack" out there, as they claim? Obviously not (I'd argue that title is held by Mission Workshop's exceptional R8), but the Prima System does a bang up job at integrating safe camera portage and elegant storage into an independently solid backpack design.
Between the company's desire to create durable and resilient product, their investment in ecologically sound manufacturing, and the attention to real life use, I think Boundary's Prima system will carry off a lot more than a single successful campaign.
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