They say, like with tree rings, that you can estimate the length of a photographic career by the number of bags. This seems to hold true and many of us have a cupboard like the one above. What stands out here is that this follows the ‘clear out to end all clear outs’ last year in which the pages of Ebay were littered with cast offs, mistaken buys and those that seemed perfect at the time but just never seemed to get used. I wondered if some form of retrospective might enable a rounded view of the current state of play. The cupboard isn’t even as full as it might be. there is a Think Tank holster in the car and a Lowepro Rover in the post. There is also of course the usual set of saved web pages listing what may be the next perfect bag or the next mistake. Some things hold true – buy cheap, buy twice is one. there really is no point messing about with cheap fall apart bags as you end up spending more in the end. There is also the very clear rule forgotten by many that there is no such thing as the perfect bag. The best we can ever get is perfect for that particular time, place, weather and equipment.This of course the golden rule that gives us licence to keep buying more and more as each day is different, each location specific and we of course also change our cameras. In episode two we’ll have a look at the current Baglist.