Billingham Bags: A review

Ten years (almost) of using Billingham Bags

There are many, many, many reviews of Billingham Bags online and if you're reading this then you're probably researching purchasing one. Or you're a super fan. I'm confident enough in their quality to predict that you have yet to come across a negative review of the company or its produce though. And I'm not about to change that.

I have used two Billingham bags in the decade since I started working in photography in my late teens. My first job was in a camera shop in Birmingham dealing with DSLRs and pro equipment. We were only about eight miles up the road from the Billingham factory in Cradley Heath, and we were lucky enough to stock Billingham bags. Needless to say, after selling them and admiring them for several months, I eventually bought a couple.

Things have changed a lot since those halcyon days: I no longer sell cameras to photographers, but work as one; I live in another city entirely; I have owned at least five different camera bodies since and probably bought and sold thousands of pounds worth of other equipment. Yet two things have stayed the same: I still look 18 years old, defying time and biology, and crucially, I still use those two Billinghams. 

(Just under) ten years is probably a good enough amount of time to be able to judge if something works well or not, so it seemed only fair to Billingham to summarise my experiences of using these truly great bags.

I own a Hadley Original Pro, which I bought in late 2007, and a 335, purchased in 2008 to cater for my growing kit. Billingham no longer make the Hadley Original I have, so it's technically a relic, but it is basically the current Hadley Pro minus the top handle and back pouch. The 335 is still going strong - mine and the product line as a whole. 

The Hadley: 

Billingham Hadley Original, bought 2007.

This is my Hadley Original Pro. It's ageing nearly as well as I am, with barely a scuff or mark on it.

The materials and build are all the same as the current Hadley series, so you can check those for the specs, but trust me when I say that these bags are almost indestructible. 

The canvas is waterproof thanks to its construction (called Stormblock). When new, the water will "bead" off the canvas entirely. Over time (about five years?) this wanes slightly and the water just absorbs into the canvas itself. But thanks to a layer of rubber inside the material it will never get inside the bag proper. You could also apply water repellents to the bag again, should you wish to.

I put my bag through some pretty heavy use (which I'll cover later), so for it to still look this way is remarkable. I have had to have some alterations made though. Included in the picture above are the original leather straps (bottom left). You can just about notice the difference in colour of the new ones on the front of the bag. I had these replaced in 2015 after the originals wore out and were no longer secure enough. However, I have kept the originals as spares because they do still work, just not quite as well as I need. The fact you can even buy replacements shows just how well thought out and considered the whole customer experience and journey is. Billingham really do make bags for life.

By 2012 this bag, as my primary day bag, had visited 14 countries and been out in snow, wind, rain, sun and fog. It has been covered in petrol, dust, debris and who knows what else, surviving riots, shoots in clubs and music venues, travelling caves deep underground. It has flown thousands of miles and walked hundreds and hundreds of miles by my side across all terrain. I even bought a shoulder pad to make it more comfortable on long trips (definitely recommended). And despite all this it was in near perfect condition…except for one place. 

Corners are the achilles heal of all fabrics. They are the literal points at which creases and seams meet and fray. On my bag, the top left corner of the flap had worn out, presumably because I rested my hand there when I walked with it. It was a small hole about five millimetres wide and only in the upper layer of canvas, the actual interior was still sheltered. But, given the tests I put it through, I emailed Billingham asking if they could create a leather patch to cover over the hole and prevent further wear in that area.

The customer service was great and they happily looked into my request. There were no automated dial menus or layers of bureaucracy, and everything was dealt with on a personal level. After sending pictures in, I was given a rough estimate and sent my bag back to the factory. A senior technician told me that due to the thickness of the leather and position of the hole, it would be simpler and more cost effective to just replace the entire section of the bag, so they did. The whole process took about a week. The quality and consistency of the repair was excellent, and they even took the original leather fixtures and fittings off the old canvas piece and attached them to the new one, to minimise noticeable change. I couldn't name another company with such attention to detail. 

Early last year, when another area began to wear a bit thin in the place which is inevitably going to rub against your hip, I decided to pre-empt the problem and requested a leather patch to be added, as I would be travelling a lot and wanted to avoid a potential disaster later on (see picture, right). 

My request was dealt with in the same way as before and just as promptly. The leather patch was added where I had requested and was done to the same exacting and high standards as the whole bag. It means my bag, which was nowhere near the end of its life, now has it extended even longer and will most probably outlast me.

This pride and care for customers is what makes Billingham great. They do their best to accommodate you, even if the request is fairly pointless or tedious. 

In reality, it is highly unlikely most people would even have to contact the customer support team given the quality of the output, and any search online will show you far more battered and aged bags than mine which are still going strong. I just have a tendency to want to avoid problems before they occur, especially as I am outside in the British weather a lot. 

Which means rain. 

The 335:

Billingham 335

So, this is the greatest camera bag ever made. Fact. And I don't just mean mine, I mean this range. The 335 sits plum in the middle of the "5 Series" and is pretty much the prefect size/weight/capacity ratio for anyone with even a modest camera kit. Unless you hoard stuff (go for a bigger one).

It looks incredible. Look at it. Just look. I don't really need to say much else. 

Admittedly, mine has, as with the Hadley, had some modification to it. You can see one of the two Delta Pockets I have added. These clip on to the strap on each side and are a perfect way to add capacity. Another great thought by a company which could just force you to buy a whole new, larger bag from them. The pouches came along when I started video work alongside stills and needed space for microphones, popsheilds and viewfinders etc. They're great. On a recent shoot, I was able to stick a Nikon PF 300mm f/4 lens in one pouch and carry that with me on my belt out to the location, whilst leaving the full bag at base and sparing my back some pain. 

This said, the 335 is massive and you may not need the pouches at all. I've heard it described as a TARDIS, a cavern and as Mary Poppins' bag (i.e bottomless). I often find stuff in mine which I had forgotten even existed, like random eyepiece covers and hot-shoe caps. This is the slight drawback to the bag - you can get so much in it that it can require some organisational skills to use effectively. If you buy this, spend a good few days experimenting with layouts, pockets usage, what goes where etc, to ensure you get the best out of it. 

I was walking back from a shoot in London one evening when a man jogged up from behind and said "that's a nice fishing bag". I don't know where he thought I had been fishing - the Thames? - but it shows Billingham's heritage is still very evident, but also the camouflage effect of it too. Bilinghams don't shout "camera!" to general opportunistic thieves, unlike most other camera bags. Plus, when this is full it can weigh a fair bit. Often over 10kg. So running away or fending someone off isn't really going to be easy unless you can crush them under the weight. So you really want to avoid being robbed in the first place.

That weight is because this bag is my portable store; it acts like a portable cupboard, storing everything I could possibly need on a shoot and enabling me to take what I need from it to use. Realistically, this bag isn't going on day trips. I carry it where I need it and then leave it there until i'm done and moving on. It is highly portable and fits into overhead lockers on planes, squeezes onto packed Tube trains and is nimble enough to move around at your side, but it kills your back after a while. It has metal feet on its base for a reason. Put it down once you're where you need to be! 

Next, tripods: they're annoying to transport aren't they? When you have a camera bag on your shoulder, one of those annoying wheeley hard-cases with lights inside, a laptop under your arm and lunch in the other hand, a tripod is the least convenient thing to try carrying. Well Billingham know that feeling and created tripod straps. In all honesty, I haven't quite worked out how to use these effectively yet but I think I'm getting there.

At first I used the ready made loops on the 335's base, but this meant my tripod dangled below the bag trying to kneecap me with each step along Cardiff high street. I switched to using the loops on the top of the bag, which was a lot better but pulled the bag away from my body and made it a little unstable, despite the specially designed strap of the 335. In the end, I went for the process of pushing the tripod between the bag strap so that it rests on the top flap. Before, whenever I did this, it meant having to re-adjust the tripod every now and then, whereas now, combined with the tripod straps looped through the actual bag strap, all stays in place. Perfect. As said earlier, it just required some experimentation to get the right arrangement. 

***

And that's it. I could list all the inserts, pockets and tech specs, but the Billingham Website and other reviews do that better, I just wanted to share a few thoughts about the two camera bags I use for my daily work. They weren't cheap (even with my staff discount all those years ago) but the investment has more than paid off. You invest in lenses to use for years with a variety of bodies, think of Billinghams in the same light. They aren't a short term option, they will be there for the duration, probably generations. 

The company is family owned, from my local area, has great respect for its products, customers and heritage and does what it says on the tin. It makes camera bags that last. Bags that look good without being obvious. And most of all, which do the job they are intended for. Get one. 

***I am neither working for, sponsored by or an associate of Billingham Bags. This is a personal review in a personal capacity and I make no money from it***

Through The Lens #9

#9: Warehouse

Warehouses. Large. Cavernous, even. Ugly? Definitely conspicuous in their surroundings. But, in a twist of irony, crucial to the online world we now live in. For the internet, or at least retail on the internet, relies almost entirely on these huge storage and distribution centres dotted around the UK, and indeed the world. We have replaced physical shops on our high street for anonymous, enormous, incongruous mammoths in the countryside. And we all know what happened to the mammoth.

Our desire for here and now products, next day delivery, and a huge range of choice of anything from glow in the dark garden gnomes to a 6ft statue of Zeus, means that these gigantic spaces are here to stay and probably increase in number and size.

For some reason, probably that of speed, efficiency and cost, these glorified sheds are yet to be designed in a way that is aesthetically pleasing or suited to their surroundings. Instead they squat unceremoniously in the landscape like giant cubes of sugar in our green and pleasant pastures. And we all know too much sugar is bad for us.

Maybe as time goes on, architects and engineers will begin to design these buildings sympathetically, using the vast acreage of the roofs for plants, or solar panels. This would go some way to offset the carbon footprint of the extra delivery trucks now on our roads. Rooftop meadows could provide space for pollinators and birds to live, making up for the area the size of - insert a relevant size measurement in relation to Wales here - taken up by these buildings. 

They are modern cathedrals to consumerism. They consume space, resources and land, and churn out products which our chubby fingers typed away ordering a mere seconds before. This is the modern world. We are becoming increasingly distant from our natural world and surroundings, and are destroying more of it in our continued distancing from it. 

Warehouses were initially built in correlation to the capacity of the vessels transporting the goods. That's why the many old quayside buildings up and down the country are almost perfect for conversion into luxury flats now, they were built on a human scale. Increased warehouse capacity means increased haulage capacity, and vice versa. This cycle is forcing us to build more, bigger warehouses, then build more lorries, roads, services to cater for the vehicles etc. All this because we stopped going to a physical shop and went on a computer instead. It's a cruel twist of fate but also invisible to most of us, so we don't think about it.

We can't change the way the modern economy, and in particular our internet economy, now functions. That's luddite in attitude and philistine in thinking. But we should look at the real-world impact our online actions have. Warehouses are probably the most obvious physical representation of this. If nothing else is done, we could at least require them to be designed in sympathy with the surrounding environment, and provide provisions to replace, support or cooperate with the natural environment they have disturbed. 

The oak tree in the picture above could potentially live for hundreds more years. What will the solid expanse of white panelling constituting the wall of the warehouse look like in 500 years? If it's even standing, what purpose will it have? The oak tree's role is pretty clear. The warehouse is the great pretender.

If you've enjoyed reading this, or desperately need something to take your mind of warehouses, try one of my other Through The Lens features:

Through The Lens #1
Through The Lens #2
Through The Lens #3
Through The Lens #4
Through The Lens #5
Through The Lens #6

Through The Lens #7
Through The Lens #8

Through The Lens #8

#8: Car Parks

This is Church Street Multi-storey car park in Watford. At the moment I took this picture, a couple were admiring the view over West Watford during a particularly pretty sunset in May 2015.

Watford suffered from the misguided 1960s town planning which struck many towns and cities across the UK. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that Watford was almost as badly affected as Coventry. But for some reason Coventry gets more attention for their ring-road oblivion. At least that's something for them to shout about. 

Church Street car park sits on the western edge of the town centre right next to the ring road, shielding St Mary's church from the traffic. As far as multi-storey car parks go, it's actually quite interesting and well designed, looking more like a model borrowed from a Gerry Anderson supermarionation show, replete with its spiralling ramp, weird concrete lantern/bandstand and moulded-concrete patterned exterior wall facing the church. It is quite pokey inside though.

To top it off, the whole building has just been painted too, which covered up the years of grime and degradation which so often makes concrete structures look that much worse. That said, it is still a car park. 

But then again, that's my point on this occasion; we often overlook our car parks as merely functional structures doing a functional thing. 

Church Street, for example, sits right in the heart of central Watford. As does the Gade Car Park and Palace Car Park on the opposite sides of the town centre. These are prime locations and actually some of the tallest structures in the town. Likewise, across many cities in the UK, central car parks tower over the central districts. This was the case in Birmingham, with its Pallasades shopping centre car park above New Street Station, just about as central as could be (it's since been pulverised and turned into a shiny John Lewis - which is how they make all John Lewises nationwide). The King William Car Park and Princesshay Car Park in Exeter were second in height only to (you guessed it) the John Lewis building…and possibly the flag poles on the cathedral towers.

Trinity Square car park in Gateshead was another example of a huge, dominating car park in a prime urban spot. It was of the more harsh grey, brutalist concrete style which springs to mind when you think "multi-storey car park". In fact, it is the epitome of a multi-storey car park. I say "is", it was demolished in 2010 and is now a John Lewis. Only joking, this one became a Tesco and was actually nominated for the Carbuncle Cup.

Car parks, therefore, are some of the most central, well placed buildings in our urban environments. They're obviously well-connected and accessible, and most of the time tower over everything else around them, providing excellent views of the town you happen to be in. But how often have you ever looked at a car park and thought "viewing platform"? We just don't see these structures as anything other than functional. Besides, if your town has an ugly car park then the best place to be is in it, so you won't have to look at it. Much like the Eiffel Tower (that joke comes courtesy of Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant).

We're on the cusp of a technological revolution in the automotive world, and these concrete colossi may well be gone within a lifetime. It's guesswork, obviously, but I am willing to predict that in 10-20 years, automated vehicles will be summoned at the tap of a button on whatever devices we have, and actual ownership will be non-existent. Instead, we will pay subscriptions in the style of Netflix or a phone contract, which will enable us to use one of a fleet of autonomous cars (electric, hydrogen, biofuel or some such power source) which just ferry people around constantly. After all, your car spends most of its life idle on a driveway or in a parking space, so it makes sense when they become fully automated, for them to just be used as and when you need it; and when you don't, someone else will be in it. 

With this in mind, what of the car park? It won't be needed, obviously. It's prime central location will look increasingly conspicuous and untenable, the sheer scale and waste of space will be too much to bear. just think of all the John Lewises there could be! (Solihull's tallest building is a John Lewis with a car park on the roof. Just for irony, I presume). 

So, make the most of our car parks. They may not all be pretty and the stairwells may smell dubious. The concrete will be grey, moulding and flakey, and it's likely there will be pigeons everywhere, but remember: they probably offer the best views around, and for free. But most importantly, it is likely that these structures, nay the entire concept of leaving your own vehicle somewhere, will be gone within your lifetime, to become a relic just like mews have become places where posh people live (see Through The Lens #7 for more on that). Stables and blacksmiths once dominated Victorian cities. When was the last time you saw a stable in your town?

The car park's day is nearly done and so, like the couple in my image above, you too should admire the views from the top floor, as the sun sets on these most 20th century of creations. 

If you've enjoyed reading this, or desperately need something to take your mind of car parks, try one of my other Through The Lens features:

Through The Lens #1
Through The Lens #2
Through The Lens #3
Through The Lens #4
Through The Lens #5
Through The Lens #6
Through The Lens #7

Through The Lens #7

#7: Affordable Housing 

This row of 1970s built, three bedroom houses can be found on Lamble Street in North London, not far from Hampstead Heath. Designed by architects Benson and Forsyth for Camden Council, it is a single row of nine, three storey, three bedroom houses incorporated into the larger Mansfield Estate. 

There is a car pool underneath the main living quarters, which are accessed by a staircase. The split level interiors are lit by skylights, with a roof terrace/garden above. The bedrooms, living rooms and bathrooms are spread over the three floors. 

All in all, they are modest sized homes for a small family, designed in the brutalist style (although much less harshly than some contemporary designs). Walking past them in the street, you probably wouldn't look twice; it's just another one of post-war London's housing schemes. However, the average price for one of these houses (as of late 2015) is around £3,000 per month in rent, or to buy, between £800,000 and £1,000,000. Which brings me to my point: affordable housing.

Now, by London's standards, especially within the golden glow of northern Zones 1-3, £800k to a cool £1m isn't even overly pricey. And more to the point, these small, modern houses could just as easily be a Victorian terrace, an Edwardian Lutyens-inspired Arts & Crafts house, a Georgian town house or a modern industrial conversion. Whatever the aesthetics of the bricks and mortar, the fact is that they are all extortionately (over)priced.

London survives through its lowest paid inhabitants: The street cleaners, the nurses, teachers, the Latvian immigrant serving you your inflation-busting mocca-locca-hocca-whatevery-spresso. Cab drivers, the guys in high-vis in cherry pickers changing light bulbs in a street lamp. Students. Whoever they are, the low paid, often invisible, people are what keeps London ticking for the super-rich to enjoy. The "vibrancy" and atmosphere of this city is what draws these people to it and makes them "invest" (although what they actually contribute to society with their flashy cars and brief summer stop-overs is a matter for debate). Their money is toxic to the people who live here all year round.

And herein lies the issue: by treating these brick and mortar structures, of all denominations, variations, designs and styles etc. as investments, they are creating a Disneyland of impossibility in which nobody on even a respectable salary (teachers and doctors are struggling to live within the city now) can afford to find a home.

The houses pictured above are interesting, maybe one day even architecturally important, but they are not worth £1m. They aren't worth a fraction of that. The notion of them as a home is where the value lies. Everyone wants a home, but people seeing London's property as a cash-cow, or an accessory about which they can brag, has pushed the simple goal of having a place to live out of the reach of almost everyone who actually lives and works in the city. The fact we even have the term "affordable housing" in the language highlights just how ridiculous the situation is becoming. 

Of course, the young and poor are disproportionately affected. Pushed into ghetto-like flat-shares with an endless carousel of tenants coming and going with each rent increase, this demographic is becoming increasingly transient and insecure. Forced ever further away or into decreasingly habitable premises with each rent hike, it's no surprise there is a proliferation of sheds in gardens, adverts for beds in cupboards, and a rise in homelessness across the capital. 

Ultimately, the bricks, facades, timbers and lintels may stay the same, and when you walk past a building all may look calm and respectful externally, but the reality is that behind most walls and doors there is now a group of people struggling to survive, spending upwards of half their salary on a room to sleep in, just so they can go back to work to pay for the next night. 

I have taken a lot of pictures across London of various types of housing, but no matter where I am and what the building is, the issue is the same: the cost of living here in your own home now far exceeds the financial abilities of most people in London.

This precariousness damages community, it damages longevity and loyalty to a specific area, but most of all it prevents people from ever feeling like they can call somewhere home. And that's what these buildings shown above are meant to be; homes.

Read more from the Through The Lens Series

Through The Lens #1
Through The Lens #2
Through The Lens #3
Through The Lens #4
Through The Lens #5
Through The Lens #6