SANDBAG Sand Bag SADDLEBAG Double Zipper Design 4 Bags Weight Bags for Photo Video Studio Stand by Kaezi

Double Zipper, I love the blue stripes, Heavy duty nylon, and reinforced bracing near the handle. Seems very solid, I feel like these will last forever. I'll take as many sandbags as I can get, and these do the trick!

Tired of renting sandbags (I fly to about 25 jobs a year) for $5-$10 each a day out of town. It adds up FAST. I bought a pack of these, as I usually need 3. Rough math on 25 shoots at 3 days rental each time, for 3 sandbags, even at $5 a day is over $1000 a year i was spending on rental.With these, I didnt fill them. I fly with them empty at almost no additional luggage weight, and either pick up a bag of play sand ($7) from home depot on my travel day when I arrive in town, or have my assistant fill them with landscaping rocks from the shoot location exterior the first morning. Just dump them back out before packing for the airport.These have held up extremely well considering they are not designed to be opened and closed as much as I do them. Im buying two more packs to give to assistants I use regularly in certain cities to fill and leave with them. If I use them twice and they run off with them, Im still money ahead on the rental fees I would have paid..

First of all I'll say that I am happy with this purchase. I have used them as counterweights on a boom and tied to the main shaft of my light stand to stabilize it. They fulfil my needs and are what I was expecting for the price.Physically they feel fairly sturdy. The bag and webbing all feel sufficient for my needs. As others have pointed out, the zips don't feel great and I'm sure that some usage patterns would break them quickly. For my use the second zip is redundant but it could add a little extra security for some.In use I'll start by indicating what I did with them. I am very much averse to spilling sand everywhere so I mitigated that risk two ways. First of all, instead of sand I used (cleaned/seived) pea gravel as a weight. It costs about $1 per lb and is far less likely to leak through seams etc. Secondly I placed said gravel in quart ziplock bags (3 lb a piece). With the gravel in ziplocks in these sand bags I feel safe using them almost anywhere. With 12lb in them (2 x 3 lb bags per side) they weigh down my stands well and function well as counterweights for my boom. I haven't actually tried just draping them over the stand's legs but have rather attached them in various other ways via the handles (to make sure they can't slip off). To this end they have worked well.Having scanned some of the negative reviews I'll respond to a few criticisms I've seen. First of all the methods I enumerated above mitigate a lot of the risk of sand leakage. To say these are no better than a ziplock bag is quite unfair. Having a handle makes them far more versatile and I'd feel far more comfortable laying these over a stand leg than a gallon ziplock bag. The zips definitely feel weak and if you are going to be constantly filling/emptying them I believe that may become a problem but if you going to "fill once, use many" then you may not have an issue. Finally for anyone complaining that these don't contain sand: fully filled the set of 4 weigh nearly 50lb; not a very shipping friendly size. Sand or other filling material is very cheap and you are far better served acquiring it locally.Overall these do what I expect. If you care tremendously about long term durability when repeatedly refilled or used without a liner, perhaps look elsewhere. If you line them and leave them filled then you'll probably be fine.

Used these for a recent photo shoot in windy conditions and they are perfect for my photography. The saddle bag design allows me to drape them over the legs of my tripod or my reflector stand for stability. The bags DO NOT come with any sand in them (sand is very heavy and would have been very expensive to ship). I bought pea gravel at my local home improvement store and filled quart-size Ziploc bags which I then put in the sand bags. The sandbags have double zippers so in addition to my Ziploc bag, there are two zippers on each side of the sand bag to keep sand or pea gravel from leaking out. After the photo shoot we had a picnic lunch and used the sandbags to keep the picnic blanket from blowing up over the food. Very sturdy bags, I like the canvas strap handle and would highly recommend these. I ordered the blue stripe but they also come in other colors if you want something more high-visibility. Great product.