Kata is one of the most surreally-named companies that I’ve had the pleasure to deal with. As a black belt in karate, the Japanese word ‘kata’ is used to refer to the form by which martial arts are taught. As such, it’s always strangely bemused me that this Israeli company has no Japanese ties. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t have any martial ties, as the founders based their revolutionary bags’ protective layers on space-age combat armor materials.
I remember when I first came into contact with some of their bags, specifically the diminutive Shell-03. It was so compact and how no rigid skeleton, leading my first blush impression to be that the bag was terribly flimsy. It just didn’t feel rugged the way you would expect a bag based on military technology to feel. Nonetheless, after working with one and living with it for years, I’ve had to admit that the combination of their designs and the space-age insulating material they use does its job exceptionally well.
With that said, I think we still would prefer our bags to have some additional support structure that would help shield our cameras from more direct crushing weight. Well, with Kata’s new OMB (One-Man Bag), this is definitely the case. Solid structure and support inside make this feel like the sort of bag that you could successfully recover your gear from an earthquake in. The OMB 72 is designed for filmmakers who are taking along just the basics of camera, mic, etc. The OMB 74 is designed for filmmakers who want to take all these things, plus their 15.4” screen laptop.
With that said, let’s take a look at how everything performed.
Due to the structure of these bags, they’re very easy to load with gear and get ready to go. Their snap top handles makes it easy to keep them together and they’ve got some added room so that you can actually stow a small tripod between the top of the bag and the clips of the handles. However, for those of us who are going to need to take a more rugged (and bulky) tripod with us in a separate bag or for those of you who are skilled enough to shoot handheld consistently, this extra room in the handle is actually a bit of a liability. This is because the extra strap length leads to additional bag swing when handholding that would be removed if these strap lengths were shorter. Perhaps future bags can have adjustable handle lengths to avoid this issue. Aside from this admittedly minor complaint, everything else works quite well as far as ease of use goes.
