I wanted to write this review for two reasons.
Firstly, South Africans are generally poor at reviewing products and secondly the camera accessory market is small for locally sourced goods. Seeing as Lens Love is a female-led and local business I was super pumped to trial one of their products!
The ‘Ava’ Camera Bag is a genuine leather, classic tote which is available in black and brown. I chose brown and I was so pleased with my choice!
Perks:
The bag is beautiful.
The quality and craftsmanship of this leather bag is top notch. Zips, stitching and clasps all work seamlessly.
The padded compartments are supportive of the gear it holds, as well as generous. I have a large full frame camera, three (fat) lenses (one of which is a long 70 – 200mm) as well as a flash, batteries and other fiddly bits. It fits them all in, without having to stack one thing on top of another. This is the fist time that I have experienced being able to unzip – grab – zip – shoot. Voila.
There are ample pockets for smaller gadgets.
The bag has 6 small feet underneath which I thought was a great touch. It keeps the underside from getting scuffed.
Cons:
The straps are a little on the skinny side, especially if the bag is full with gear. It can feel heavy on the shoulders.
The memory card pouch, although very creative, does not allow space for memory cards to be stored with their plastic sleeves. This means the memory cards will be stored ‘naked’ (as shown in the picture below), and I would not risk storing my cards like that.
The cost of the bag is steep, it sells for R3100. However, for a premium quality bag of this calibre, I can understand that the price does reflect the excellent craftsmanship.
The BIGGEST perk for me so far, is that I have parked my fabulous, but purely functional Think Tank camera bag and I now use the Ava bag, which means I take it out with me on personal and social excursions which I just would NOT have done before. I am now shooting my kids and friends more often, and have my camera with me most of the time. My ‘work’ has now become ‘work and play’ and this is invaluable for me.
Cheryl, thanks for wonderful service. I love me new camera tote bag!
(Some of the images above have kindly been supplied by Robyn Davie Photography)