Better Than a Vest?

A few months ago I got really tired of wearing a photo vest. It seemed like I was always getting dirt and mud underneath it from crawling around on my stomach photographing birds. I would occasionally lose things out of the pockets on the vest and it was really difficult to keep the sand and grit out of my teleconverter and extension tubes. One day I was at the local fabric store with my wife and noticed they had some two inch wide Velcro. Light bulb comes on and I buy a couple of feet of the stuff and then walked around all antsy waiting on my wife to hurry up so I could get home and put my newly acquired Velcro to some good use.

What I ended up doing with the Velcro is cutting a piece long enough to fasten around the lens barrel of my long telephoto. I took the pouch the teleconverter came in and fastened it to the Velcro and then Velcro’ed the whole thing around my lens barrel. Next I placed my 1.4x TC and a 20mm extension tube in the pouch and I am good to go. All I need to do now is jam an extra battery in my pants pocket and I am off and running. No more vest for me, ever, as this set up is much better for the kind of photography I do.

Using Velcro to attach things to a lens is most likely not a new idea, however, it is new to me. I could not be more pleased with my new setup. You might give it a try and find you don't need a vest.