This Leather Lens Bag Makes Carrying Your Gear Easy
- What Would Make a Camera and Lens Bag Perfect?
- What’s the Difference in a Lens Bag vs Camera Bag?
- Open-Top Lens Bags are Great for Active Photographers
- Holdfast Leather Explorer Lens Quiver
- Other Bag and Strap Solutions
- Recommended Photography Gear
- How To Wow a Photography Client
- What to Look for in a Good Camera Strap
- How to Pack Your Camera Gear
- Stylish Photography Accessories that are Also Functional
- This Camera Lens Bag Will Improve Your Workflow
- How to Pack Your Camera Gear
Shopping for camera bags and lens bags, I have yet to find the perfect solution for carrying my photography ear. However, I have found several lens bags and camera bags that are definitely in the running!
Table of Contents:
What Would Make a Camera and Lens Bag Perfect?
Since I started out by informing everyone that I haven’t ever seen a perfect camera or lens bag, I’m sure you all are on the edge of your computer or phone screens awaiting my enlightenment. Well, to be honest, I really don’t have a complete answer.
However, that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying testing new camera and lens bags. I’ve found several that are amazingly useful for me. And I can attach the label “virtually perfect” to a few of them.
Two serious considerations for my photography gear and shooting style are ease of access and versatility. Add those to the basic need of protecting my gear and you can see why I’m constantly looking for a great camera and lens bag. It also helps if I’m satisfied with how the bag looks since I’m often shooting for paying clients and I like to project a professional image.
Let me introduce you to the Holdfast Leather Explorer Lens Quiver, a good-looking, versatile, and very usable camera lens bag. I’ll point out to you the features and quality that make this camera and lens bag “virtually perfect” for a working photographer.
What’s the Difference in a Lens Bag vs Camera Bag?
What bag did you get when you picked out your first serious camera? For many beginner photographers getting a DSLR or a mirrorless camera system, their first bag was either part of a larger kit or added on almost as an afterthought, “oh yeah, I need a bag to carry it all.”
After your first few photo treks or after an early photography career photoshoot, you really got to see all of the shortcomings a camera bag can have. It didn’t hold enough, didn’t protect the gear well, and was difficult to get stuff in and out of it quickly.
So, you updated your camera bag, maybe several times. Each time, you noticed something else you would have liked to be slightly different. Which is why my perfect camera bag is actually more than one, I use the best camera or lens bag for the needs of my photoshoot.
Any camera bag I have will have a fair amount of padding, is large enough to hold my camera, maybe two, plus some lenses and accessories. My camera bags usually close up somehow, zippers, velcro, snaps, buckles, flaps, and so on.
A lens bag is different. It will be less padded but still will offer plenty of protection and generally won’t have a closable top.
Learn More:
Open-Top Lens Bags are Great for Active Photographers
If this is your first time seeing a lens bag with an open-top, it will seem kind of odd to you at first. Once you take with you on an active photoshoot, such as weddings, environmental portraits, commercial real estate, on-location boudoir sessions, lifestyle small product ads, and any other style of active shoot that requires rapid lens changes.
A lens bag, or the term Holdfast uses lens quiver, is a great choice for an active photoshoot since it holds the lenses at the ready and gives you super easy access while keeping them safe as well.
The lens bag is deep enough for a longer fast zoom lens and wide enough to hold several at once. Alternatively, you could put a large portable flash in the place of one of the lenses. The open-top means there is no fumbling with a strap, buckle, snap, or zipper when you’re simply wanting to change over to your fast prime from the wide zoom you had on the camera.
Holdfast Leather Explorer Lens Quiver
As far as a lens bag that meets all of those criteria and is super good-looking to boot, the Leather Explorer Lens Quiver from Holdfast Gear is as close to perfect as I’ve found for an active photographer.
The first thing you’ll notice about this lens bag is the beauty of its Water Buffalo leather and waxed oil canvas construction. So, whether you’re at a formal event such as a wedding or at a truck and tractor pull for some lifestyle product shots, you’ll fit in nicely.
It has nine pockets of various sizes, it holds two large lenses, a flash, batteries, memory cards, smartphone, and all sorts of smaller, necessary accessories. The design of the lens bag fits right in with the Holdfast Money Maker Holster Strap which can hold two loaded cameras comfortably, making the combination of strap and lens bag as close to a perfect solution for a busy photography session as I have found.
It helps that Holdfast uses only the finest materials and relies on the skills of craftspeople that take pride in the products they make. If you buy from Holdfast, the gear you get will long outlast your current photography gear!
Other Bag and Strap Solutions
Holdfast Gear makes all sorts of photography gear such as straps, harness straps, camera bags, lens bags, belts, and other accessories for the discerning photographer. They may not have the “perfect” solution, but what they do have is as close to perfect as I have seen. Check them out!
All images of the Holdfast Leather Explorer Lens Quiver are by Brandon Burk.