SLR in your bag: with lens attached or not?

[GenDEM]

Just curious what you all do. I keep my 28-105 attached to my 10D in the bag...is this a good idea or no? Does it matter? I have a Lowepro Orion AW bag and the camera is lens down in the middle.

[martcol]

I keep the lens on my body all the time. Would think the less you have your lens on and off the better especially, with the risk of dust on sensor.

Plus, my cameras always ready

Martin

[justme_dc]

I always have a lens attached to my camera unless I am storing the body at home. I have never had any problems from doing this. Cameras are kinda designed to have a lens mounted to the front of them... I always use caution when I have a large or heavy lens mounted but that is usually 'cause I am worried about the lens taking damage not the camera body. I would imagine that you would lose a lot of great photo opportunities if you always took your lens off when you put your camera back in the bag. All my camera bags, including my flight cases have provisions for storing the camera with lens attached.

[kendersplace]

I too always keep a lense on. Usually the last lense I used just stays on the camera. I've got a bag with a large support just for a large lense, so the camera is supported and protected very well.

It probably doesn't matter much on film cams, but as noted above, a major concern is dust on the sensor. Every time you take off a lense, some dust WILL foat into your camera. Eventually with enough dust, some of it will end up on the sensor.

[Kevin Connery]

Off.

If I'm working, I've got one lens on the body, and one or two in pouches on my waist. If I'm travelling, the camera's in the case, with just a body cap--I can get more stuff in the case that way.

[Longwatcher]

Maybe this doesn't count, but If I did not keep my lenses on the cameras they would not fit in my camera bag any more ;-)

Seriously, At least the way I have them stored, the bag is designed for storage of camera with lens on and I don't want to have to remove the camera/lens caps (except front cap) just to take a picture in a hurry. I don't anticipate any problem and all of my camera's are always stored with a lens on them.