Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Ditto! I leave the third week of June for my 3wk trip. Argh!

Received my Loka and 3 ICU's weeks ago. It's AWESOME!

Insights I gained that you might benefit from:
1) You can always split your order.
2) When UPG gives you a 4 day delivery estimate..double it. It cost me $32 dollars in shipping for 8 day delivery..so $70 overnight is a consideration if the timeline gets tight. They asked me if I wanted to change but I wasn't in a hurry.
3) Take them up on the offer to get the rain cover and the water holder, if you haven't, when they give you shipping notice.
4) ...it was worth the wait.

I thought I needed the large to carry all my daily gear and I only need the medium. It holds a boatload...and I also usually carry a tablet.

Not a single question from 3 different airlines. Fits under seats comfortably.

I've been walking all over with the medium ICU full, a tripod, and a light stand, with no sore body parts the next morning.

I didn't understand the water holder part it seems. It is a watertight bag that fits inside to offer more protection and not a $9 bladder like I thought. I will order one.

Thanks for the review! When I saw your post I emailed them and asked them to add the water bladder to my order. I've got a rain cover from MEC that works beautifully for bags so I'll just use that. They just emailed me back saying that it's no problem and that my whole order's going out today... Woohooo!!

I'll update with a post once I get it and play around with it for a few weeks.

Berge

Well I got home today and to my surprise, there's a message on my answering machine from F-Stop saying they have the Talopa bags arriving shortly (this after I was emailed about them arriving 3months ago) and they wanted to verify my shipping address and CC info. This after almost 7 months of initially placing the order, sending them email inquiries and notifying them that due to the LONG delay, the CC I used was expiring and wasn't sure if I was already billed. They never returned any of my emails and I've already returned from my 3wk trip last month (when I really needed the bag).

Anyone looking for a Tilopa bag seeing that I'll be cancelling this order (which I thought was already cancelled by them) and I can refer them to you.

Utter disappointment is an understatement here.

Carlton man that sucks bigtime; I'm really sorry to hear that!

I find it quite odd that you didn't get any replies by email because the few times that I've communicated with them, they've gotten back to me within a few hours so I'm really sorry to hear that it wasn't the same for you!!

I received my bag a few months back with the small/pro ICU and had the chance to use on a TPMG even as well as the 3 weeks in Italy/Beirut that my wife and I just got back from a couple weeks ago. The bag is super comfy and when it's on my back I don't really notice that it's there most of the time; you can see it making an appearance in the picture below... while I'm here, I can share some photos from our trip. I'm still processing the bulk of them but the first set can bee seen here.

I'm still waiting on the small/shallow ICU that I had already ordered and they let me know that it shipped today. Good luck with whatever you decide to do with your order!!

Thanks. I was going to do an Africa trip next year and might have still gotten the bag but plans have changed and Africa has been put off till 2013/14 so I don't need the bag for a while. It doesn't make sense for me to get the bag and have it sit in the closet till then.

Damn, looks like you had a great trip!

I took a bunch of home videos on my trip but got the typical shaky cam look. Check out Adobe's Warp Stabilizer in After Effects CS5.5

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs-55-product ... ects-cs55/

Wow, that technology looks pretty wicked!!

Ya, the trip was great but keep in mind that the pics on Flickr are just day 2 of 23 on the trip so there are lots more (2,000+ overall & 25gb of RAW to process.. sigh)

I hear ya! I just got back from Paris and shot over 2000 photos and 35 rolls of film. I'm all photo'd out...well not quite yet!

Packed a full large ICU about 10km a day in my Loka and hardly noticed it.

Carlton, you might find your bag doesn't sit in the closet. I've carried mine everyday since I got it.

There is a Loka in this picture...on the wife's back on the left.
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I agree with Crash that you may find that it doesn't just sit in the closet. I don't use my every day but do use it enough to justify the cost of getting it. I finally received my small slim ICU so now my full order is finally complete... only took 8 months but obviously they're popular bags and there was a supply chain issue.

I've got all of my Italy photos up from our trip here with the ones from Beirut coming up as soon as I find the time to finalize them. I used a lot of bracketing on this trip because we were out most of the time in the mid-day sun and most of them turned out pretty good I think