{"id":18515,"date":"2013-03-10T14:27:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T06:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=18515"},"modified":"2017-02-25T12:46:19","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T04:46:19","slug":"billingham-hadley-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2013\/03\/10\/billingham-hadley-pro\/","title":{"rendered":"Billingham Hadley Pro"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the same way that (some?) women obsess over handbags, photography enthusiasts equally also lust over camera bags! I’ve blogged about camera bags here on a couple of occasions<\/a> now but over the last year or so have pretty nicely settled into a small National Geographic mini-messenger bag (the 2346<\/a>). The bag has accompanied me on three out of the country trips now in the last 9 months now. It’s pretty ruggedly made of canvas, light weight, and can be compressed into our luggage bags without permanent damage – and size wise, is just perfect for the E-M5, flashgun, HD video camera, another lens, and the iPad. The bag costs quite a bit here at the local National Geographic stores, so I got it online from a seller based in Israel – for nearly two thirds of the resale price here.<\/p>\n

I’ve been on the look-out for a larger bag too that would accommodate a refurbished Asus Zenbook I picked up for cheap, and had been reading up on the Billingham bags<\/a>. These bags are widely considered the equivalent of Rolls-Royces when it comes to camera bags on account of their materials, loving care to design, and very high quality workmanship. They also, rather uniquely, have very high-resale value – the bags age very well, with many owners over the years remarking that their bags look as good as reasonably new even after years of use.<\/p>\n

The bags are sold at many shops here, but their pricing tend to follow the UK\/US retail prices i.e. pretty expensive. The one I was interested in – the Hadley Pro – lists on Amazon US already for USD269<\/a> and excluding shipping even. Ouch. I learned though after some bargain hunting that the same bags are available in South Korea for much lower prices, with this model selling for a quarter cheaper. After some further checking to ensure that the South Korean sellers were distributing the same real deals, I negotiated and submitted an offer – saving myself nearly a hundred moola compared to if I’d bought it locally – and a week after placing the order, the bag arrived by courier this morning. The model I went with was the Hadley Pro Sage Sage with Tan Leather Trim.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Billingham UK, a family-run business that first started off in the 1970s making fishing bags.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I had a choice of two material types for this bag; traditional canvas, or their purely synthetic FiberNyte – which apparently wears up with age even better, is slightly lighter and resists water better. I went with this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"OLYMPUS
Buckle fasteners and their quick releases.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soft
Soft inner linings and generous padding throughout.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Every
Every bag has a stitched label – and the bag’s unique serial number is stitched into the bag too. Amazing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have to say; the bag really does exude quality and elegance. Most camera bags are quite utilitarian and functional, but this Billingham bag is the kind that I think even women would like.:)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the same way that (some?) women obsess over handbags, photography enthusiasts equally also lust over camera bags! I’ve blogged about camera bags here on a couple of occasions now but over the last year or so have pretty nicely<\/p>\n

Read More Billingham Hadley Pro<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photography-cameras","wpcat-13-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/bag-06.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}