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Safrotto

Safrotto
This is a detail of a Safrotto canvas camera bag. These bags are made in China and sold extensively in the U.S. market. They seem a good deal less common in the U.K.
Safrotto bags - at least this one - are very similar to Domke camera bags. Perhaps Safrotto bought the rights to the Domke designs. Jim Domke created the original bag bearing his name which was so popular that he founded a company in the U.S. to produce them. That was in 1976. In 1990 he sold his company to a firm called Saunders. Saunders sold the operation to a big American photographic company called Tiffen in 1999. However, Tiffen went bankrupt in 2003, and Topspin bought their assets, including Domke bags. The company continues trading under new ownership, but this is yet another example of the name surviving for marketing purposes. On the web you can find customers' complaints about the deterioration in the quality of Domke camera bags in recent years. They claim that the canvas is thinner and that some of the fittings are now plastic. Some comment that the Safrotto lookalikes are made using better materials, and with small design improvements, at a cheaper price. If they are to be believed, the Safrotto bags are more like Jim Domke's original than the current offerings from Tiffen.
I don't know if this is the case. I bought this bag to see if Safrotto products were decent, and because it was blue, and because it was a secondhand bargain. The bag seems reasonable; not built like a Billingham bag, but many times cheaper new or used. The velcro dividers are a disappointment but better than nothing. I don't yet know how it holds up in the wet, nor how it wears. Domke bags have straps which often wear badly, so that might be a weak point.
If you need a camera bag, and you like blue denim jeans that are faded with much wear and laundering, and you favour simplicity in design, you might very well enjoy using a bag like this one.

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