Shimoda Expands its Camera bag System With Explore 30L

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by Bato ProsicNovember 1^st, 2018

Shimoda is expanding its camera bag system with a new size bag the Shimoda Explore 30L, new interior modules and new accessories. This is the third bag size in Shimoda’s Explore series, that aims to be a fully modular bag system, letting you choose bag size, different interior camera modules and accessories according to your specific needs. Here’s an overview.

Shimoda’s Explore series previously consisted of a 40L and a 60L bag size, with a small and medium core unit to configure your bags interior for use with your camera. With the 40L and 60L being pretty large bags, the addition of the Shimoda Explore 30L size makes the bag line usable for more casual or less equipment heavy use cases, as well as smaller people. Still Shimoda is trying to keep all the benefits of the larger bag sizes in this smaller form factor.

The Bag

The Shimoda Explore 30L still has the same lightweight, highly water resistant materials of the larger bag sizes, with the sealed zippers and double sided coating, which meets ecological standards. The shoulder straps are well padded, vertically adjustable and have sleeves, loops and zippable pockets for accessory attachment, as well as a sternum strap. There is a detachable waist belt, that is also padded and has loops.

Like the larger sizes the bag has multiple access points, with the main camera compartment being accessible from the bag, or the sides. The main back hatch also doubles as a laptop sleeve, accommodating laptops up to 13″ in size. Being smaller the Shimoda Explore 30L should be just as carry-on friendly as the larger sizes are.

New Core Sizes and Accessories

In addition to the already available small and medium core sizes, by popular request Shimoda is introducing two new sizes called “Large DSLR” and “Medium Mirrorless”. While the Large DSLR size is designed to hold professional bodies, with up to 300mm lenses, the Medium Mirrorless has less depth, thus not wasting any space for the more compact common mirrorless size bodies. The Shimoda Explore 30L can hold any of the now 4 available core sizes. Let’s assume that, like the older core sizes, these will come with their own sleeves, making the cores usable even outside the Shimoda bags (the small size even came with a sleeve that had a shoulder strap, so it could be used as a small, portable shoulder bag).

While Shimoda already has a line of well made accessory pouches, now you can also buy a kit of 3 different sized stuff sacks, made out of meshed material to hold soft goods, in a more breathable fashion. One could imagine either using these to organise clothes on the inside of the bag, or hang wet clothes on the outside.
Additionally for the neat freaks out there, you will be able to purchase a set of additional dividers for the core units, so all your lenses and other gear can have their own perfectly sized compartment, configured to your needs.
A new belt booster can now be used to expand the waist belt to fit less slim waistlines.

With the introduction of the Shimoda Explore 30L, Shimoda has delivered an interesting update to its bag lineup, that expands its usability as a system, considerably. Being a company committed to the adventure photography market, it would still be interesting to see, if Shimoda could expand the line even further, to even smaller bag sizes – maybe a 20L pack, or even a sling – while also still retaining the modularity of the system.

What do you think? Do you like Shimoda’s new Explore 30L? Or would you rather see even smaller sizes of bags? Let us know in the comments!