I own the Lowepro Compudaypack for my camera and its gear. I really like the bag. It has enough room for four lenses, a body, a laptop and then a compartment for other assorted equipment. The one thing that I never really thought about when buying the bag was the ability to carry a tripod on it. I don't know why I never thought about it, but I didn't.

So, I decided to look into ways to add something to my bag to accomplish it.

I googled some things and eventually stumbled onto this video from youtube:

LOWEPRO FASTPACK 350 with custom made tripod mount

So I tried that method with a few variations (I only used one loop rather than three and I didn't use the same clamps that he did). I ran into the problem of my tripod being far too wobbly. I have an old tripod that is quite heavy compared to most of the ones I see around today. So, I decided to keep the top look and add one at the bottom just to help stabilize it. It works well. So here is what I did.

Step 1: Find an old bookbag and cut off the straps with the plastic things on them.


Step 2: Trim off a few inches from each to create the loops, one for the bottom and one for the top.

Step 3: Take all of your ends that you cut (including the ones that are still long that run through the plastic pieces), double them over and sew them closed so that the loose threads don't unravel. I learned this the hard way and had to remove one of the straps in order to do this as it was beginning to unravel.

Step 4: Figure out where you want to place your shorter "loops" at and be sure to leave room for the longer straps to run through them before sewing them on. In my case, I wound up having to use a sewing machine for the top loop, as it bears all of the weight of the tripod and despite my best efforts with and sewing, I simply couldn't get it as strong as I felt I needed it to be. It really was a pain to try and get the bag into the sewing machine, but once I got it in there, it went well. Be sure to avoid the zipper, I got pretty close in one spot and wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull it past that spot.

Step 5: Sew those bad boys on.


Step 6: Insert your longer straps through those loops for safe keeping or strap your tripod in!

Did you say sew? Wrong group . . . LOL . . . sorry. Great idea!