When traveling through India last year, I encountered a serious problem: my camera was almost stolen by pickpockets 4 times in just 3 weeks! This wasn’t just your average point and shoot digital camera either: it was the brand new Nikon which I had saved for months to buy and cost nearly as much as the plane ticket to India. I quickly figured out the reason that my camera was such an easy target: my camera bag.

Of course, when you travel with an expensive camera, you want a camera bag which is going to keep it safe. The problem with quality camera bags is that they all look like they are holding something really expensive inside. Even way down the street, it was easy to spot the notorious camera bag design and know that there was something good for the taking inside. By the end of my trip, I bought a cheap canvas bag to put my camera bag inside. This was a bit impractical but no one tried to steal my camera again after that. I was happy to see that National Geographic has come out with some camera bags that don’t look like the standard camera bags. The new Nat Geo camera bags are made from a canvas-like material and they resemble army bags more than camera bags. I’ve got one of these for my next trip and also added some patches to the outside so it looks even less like a camera bag.