Erik Seo Photography Blog

Well add to the bag reviews, here’s another one. The F-Stop Lotus. The Lotus was designed as a pack to carry a smaller amount of camera gear than the Tilopa or the Satori, however it just seems to work really well to carry the bulkiest of all the photo gear, the battery powered strobe kit. The Lotus works best with a Profoto 7b kit as you can fit the power pack, 2 heads and a the adjustable reflector inside. With the Elinchrom Ranger kit you can only fit 1 head in there due to the larger size of the Elinchrom Freelite heads, however you can easily fit an extra battery in with the different orientation of the Elinchrom Ranger power pack. With an Ranger kit in the Lotus you can fit the power pack, extra battery, charger, standard reflector and one Freelite head.

One of the great things about the F-Stop Lotus pack for carrying a battery powered strobe kit is how well the pack carries, and how well it carries on the front of your body. Now for most photographers that sounds pretty stupid to carry the pack on the front of your body but for outdoor sports photographers that carry these strobe kits along with the rest of their cameras an lenses on their back it does matter. I’ve skied with this pack on my chest with the F-Stop Satori fully loaded on my back. Now I wouldn’t ski this setup off-trail but skiing with it in a terrain park or something of the sort is much easier than with any of the other packs I’ve tried doing this with.

The Lotus, like all of the current F-Stop backpacks has a partial internal frame which makes these things carry like no other packs on the market. One last great thing about this pack is how small it folds up to. You can put your strobe kit into your Pelican case to fly with, then fold up the Lotus and put it in with the rest of your luggage, taking up very little space and weight. When folded up this pack is a mere one inch thick. To me this is a big deal. It makes traveling with the strobe kit a lot easier.

Volume: 35 Liter
Torso Length: 18.5″