Billingham Hadley Small Review

Hello all! I want to do a quick review on my new camera bag that I just recently purchased. It's the Billingham Hadley Small!

Why Billingham Hadley Small

I've been wanting to replace my Timbuk2 Classic Messenger bag for quite some time because it is not a dedicated camera bag and it does not provide bump protection although it is quite weather proof. I've looked for so many camera bags but most of them looks too plastic-y velcro-y with lots of pockets, slips and zippers which made the bag looked very complicated. I narrowed down my choice to ONA Bowery and Billingham Hadley Small.

I was about to pull the trigger and jump into ONA Bowery because it is smaller, simpler and overall more attractive to my taste. It is also quite cheaper too! Unfortunately it is not available easily at where I live and I have to import it or at least ask someone who's on a trip to somewhere that sells that particular bag. So I contemplated for a long time and decided to get the Billingham instead.

I wasn't disappointed at all! In fact, I am glad that I purchased the Billingham instead of the ONA! This bag screams quality all over the place. The size of the bag is perfect, the canvas-like material is waterproof, it feels comfortable when being slung around my body, and the leather accent as well as the overall styling of the bag is very sweet. It's not cheap though at almost US$300.00. Anyway, let's dive in deep into the details of the bag!

From the Outside

The bag doesn't look like a camera bag. The all black color in particular looks very nice and very stealthy with only the brass buckle loops and the little brass buckle holders being the non black colored parts of the bag. The size of the bag is small but not too small, big but not too big; it's the perfect size for city walkaround, travelling, casual walking with just carrying little gears. It measures 27cm horizontally at the top of the bag and 20cm vertically at the side of the bag.

From the side of the bag, it is not the slimmest bag in the world but it is still pretty compact considering the capacity of the bag. It is quite flexible too so if you tighten the buckle a little bit, it will compress the depth even more so that it becomes slightly slimmer. It measures approximately 10cm at the bottom of the bag and 12cm at the thickest point of the bag when I fully loaded it with my gears.

The flap is quite big and it's quite tight so that it seals the bag properly. The flap opening mechanism is very stealthy with no velcro involved; you open the bag by pulling the leather buckle away from the brass holders. When you first have the bag, that opening method is a bit fiddly but after a while you'll become quicker and it'll feel much better than pulling zipper or velcro.

From the Inside

There is one main compartment with removable padded insert for storing your camera as well as lenses, and there are two pockets on the front of the bag for storing small things that you usually carry with you such as filters, memory cards, straps, lens cleaning cloth, or even a pancake sized lens.

Because of the way the insert fits into the bag, it will make you have two slips that you can utilize to store more items in the bag. You can store a small tablet like a 7 inch Nexus or Apple iPad Mini behind the insert at the rear part of the bag. And you can store unused items that you won't use regularly such as rear cap or body cap in front of the insert at the front part of the bag.

As you can see from the picture above, the width of the Billingham Hadley Small is long enough for me to store two small camera bodies side by side especially cameras like Panasonic GX7, Sony Alpha A6000, Sony NEX series, Canon EOS M, Olympus PEN E-P5 or the OM-D E-M10, or Leica rangefinders with the lenses attached on each bodies. 

As you can see in the picture above, I have two bodies with lenses attached and three extra lenses; all of them fits into the bag nicely with extra room for a mobile phone, wallet, powerbank, earphone, paper documents, Android tablet, batteries, filters, and more. You can even fit a small DSLR camera but you might not be able to put as many extra lenses on the bag and it will not become slim anymore unless you uncouple the lens from the body. 

It comes with two tall dividers and two small dividers, enough to customize your insert into a comfy home for your lenses and camera bodies. With the smaller dividers, you can organize them vertically so you can have protection between lenses should you stack the lenses vertically.

That's all for my short review now. I will add more information here after a few weeks and have some real world usage report. Cheers and God bless :)