I have a pile of camera bags.
All of them have been bought for different equipment at different times, but most wind up being bought from a company called Powepro. They make generally decent stuff and I’ve gotten pretty good use out of many of the bags I’ve picked up, but when I got my Z50 I wound up needing something easy to walk around with and take photos with.
The Lowepro Nova 5 AW that I used for years with my old kit is just too big for the Mirrorless kit that i’m using right now, and it’s bulky and cumbersome when walking around. I did pick up a Adventura BP 300 III and while that’s not horrible it’s still too big if I’m just walking around taking snapshots. And you can’t access anything in there without taking it off so not so great for stashing things you need frequent access to.
And while Lowepro is generally my go-to for this type of thing all their bags all look like photography gear and I kind of wanted something a that doesn’t scream tourist with a pile of expensive camera gear.
The one bag that I kept hearing mentioned was the sling bags from Peak Design. Most of the others seemed to be being compared to that bag as the “gold standard”. I have both a Cuff and Leash from Peak Desgin for my camera but I didn’t pay full price for those. The anchors are neat, and the ability to swap things around to whatever strap configuration I want is very cool I don’t think I would have bit if I had to pay full price for them.
Looking at their bags in general I could see myself spending 180$ on a sling bag, but at that price it’s at a place where I would be willing to try alternate bags if they were cheaper. However most of the sling bags that I found interesting where still around the 140$ range and falls into a price range where I have to think on it for a bit.
Last week after being dragged down to the mall by one of my kids I was walking through the camera shop and saw they had the Peak Design 6L Sling on sale for a decent price (it’s on sale on Peak Design’s page as well for what it’s worth) and after poking at it for a bit I decided to grab one and give it a try since it was down into the same price as the other bags I was looking at because the Peak design ones were pricier than I wanted to spend.
There’s piles of reviews on this bag online in other places so I’m not getting into details here but so far the thing works well. It fits more than I would need walking around, and is well built. All in I’m ok with having spent what I did on this bag since it’s a good walking around bag. However you can’t toss a laptop in there and there’s still a pile of other charging and other accessories that I need to be packing around so it’s not a one bag to rule them all type of thing but it’s close.
I suppose that at some point I’ll have to have a think on their backpacks and see if they would be worth the 300$+ asking price for them. But for now the Lowpro bag will probably be good enough for when I’m travelling, and I’ll just pack the sling bag for me to take walking around.