In The Woods

A Safrotto copy of a Domke F-2 bag, and surprisingly good. The shoulder pad is from the Billingham range; otherwise all original.

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.

Safrotto bags are made in China and sold extensively in the U.S. market. They seem a good deal less common in the U.K. I bought this one second-hand for £6, which represented the bargain of the year for me. It’s every bit as sturdy as Domke bags I have previously owned, including an F-2 Emerald and an F-4AF, but as they too were second-hand, I never knew under whose ownership those bags were made.

Although some Safrotto products are very similar to Domke camera bags, they are not marketed with the same model designations. I have read on the web that at some point in the troubled history of bankruptcy and changes of ownership, Safrotto bought the rights to the Domke designs. One contributor remarked that the Domke name owners have never brought any legal action against Safrotto, which would be odd if they were making unauthorised copies. Instead they had some text on their web site for a couple of years asking viewers not to buy the "inferior knock-offs".

Photographed with a Nikon D700 and a Nikkor O.C 35mm f/2 lens, factory converted to AI capability.