Peak Design Everyday Sling V2 10L

There was a time when I was spending a fair bit on cameras, lenses and accessories – Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Then came this three year lull where most of my gear was kept in the dry cabinet. Now that we’re traveling again post-pandemic, it was time to dust-off – using compressed air and a jumbo air blower – all that gear and to make sure things were still in working order.

One item that I needed to replace for certain was my travel sling bag. The Lowepro Passport Sling III that was my usual go to whenever I was out of the house on weekends and also went along on our trips to Maldives and Japan. The bag has badly frayed, and is a bit of a crumpled heap without form now. I supported the crowdfunding campaign for the Alpaka Bravo Sling V2, which netted a lovely and very well built sling bag. This sling is what I’ve used everyday now, but a trial packing of gear showed that I could at most comfortably pack in the Sony A73, the Canon G7X Mark II, powerbank, the iPad Mini 6, and a few more accessories: and the Alpaka would be already clearly straining at its seams. So, I wouldn’t want to bring the Alpaka for this year-end trip, since I’d need the bag to hold at least:

Sony A73 + 24-105mm

Sony 28mm f2

Canon G7X Mark II

Camera straps for both

iPad Mini 6

A 20,000 mAH powerbank

Water bottle

Accessories

So, time to hunt for a new camera sling bag. Unlike the messenger-styled and standard backpacks, there aren’t really that many sling bag models to choose from from the major camera bag designers. I guess this might be in part because you can only make sling bags so large – the largest I’ve seen have capacities of 10 liters – before it looks absolutely ridiculous.

It didn’t take long in my research to discover that the widely acknowledged pack leader for sling bags is the Peak Design Everyday Sling V2 series. Quite a mouthful! Peak Design is perhaps better known for its camera straps, but it does fantastic camera bags too. The company  applies modular design across its product lines. It has a very strong brand following among both enthusiasts and professionals. But, as these things normally go too, their items aren’t exactly cheap. Thankfully, not to the stratosphere pricing of the Billingham bags – but that the price tags on Peak Design gear do require buyers to do some serious cost-benefit-analysis before forking out the dough.

The V2 series of their sling bag has three models that are differentiated by capacities: a 3 liter, a 5 liter, and a 10 liter. I didn’t have to think too hard about this: it would had been the largest possible – the 10 liter – since this needed to hold a good amount of gear.

Still, a good week of research eventually made the purchase design easy: every reviewer I checked out all uniformly attested to the Everyday Sling’s thoughtful design and premium quality and workmanship, and nearly every one of them likewise also testified to its fantastic utility. Excepting one professional photographer who said he wouldn’t recommend it for its style of work, which requires him to be able to easily swap lenses and bodies as quickly as possible: and the somewhat rigid flap of the bag’s main compartment makes it very hard to do so. But I’m not that kind of photographer, so that limitation wouldn’t affect my usage.

Time to see how much can this sling bag really contain!

The retail price of the bag in Singapore is SGD249 – about 10% higher than the RRP in the US. But I did get a SGD12 discount off that price from a camera store in exchange for signing up on their loyalty programme.

Interestingly, both this sling bag and the Alpaka have both identical carrying capacities of 10 liters. But there is no way I could have packed this same list of gear into the Alpaka. The Slim 7 Pro for certain does not fit into the Alpaka.

In all, this Peak Design bag seems like a fantastic purchase, though the real test would be in the year end trip in 8 weeks. More notes soon on this bag for certain!