For the last 6 years, I’ve been using a padded Valvoline-branded lunch bag as my camera bag. It held my mirrorless Canon camera plus a couple lenses and the various accessories I need perfectly, and slides right into a larger tote bag alongside my 14-inch MacBook Pro and other stuff. When I’m out with the camera, say at Pitti Uomo, the tote conceals the Valvoline branding and the bag’s padding means I’m not banging the gear on the floor when I set it down.
But this is a ridiculous setup, and so when Bleu de Chauffe asked if I would want to take one of their bags for a spin, I said “I desperately need a new camera bag to take to Pitti Uomo.”
They make two camera bags, a larger one called Arles and a smaller one called Bologne. I took the smaller one, as it’s about the same size as my hilarious lunch bag setup that I was used to.
[This post contains affiliate links that earn me a commission when you make a purchase.]
Of import for this review: my camera gear for most Pitti trips
Canon EOS R8 mirrorless full-frame camera
Canon EF 70-200mm f4L lens [mounted with the EF-R adapter]
I love the EOS R8 because it is not much larger than a point and shoot camera yet is full-frame and has pretty good, fast facial-recognition capable auto-focus. In the fast paced environment of the street style world at Pitti it works quite well.
I find the 35mm prime to be just about perfect for all the indoor shooting I do while there, too.
The EF 70-200 is a lens I borrow from my day job. We’re switching to Sony because we already use Sony for video so the Canon gear is becoming relegated. I’ve rented the R-mount version in the past with the superior 2.8 aperture and it made great images but the lack of internal zoom was annoying. Canon has since released a better internal-zoom version which I’d favor. Zoomed in all the way to 200mm, though, the EF with its f/4 makes images that look pretty great.
There’s a good chance I will buy a 24-70mm 2.8 lens in the future as it could potentially be my single shooter for all things most of the time.
Onto the bag
The bag is leather, but camera bags usually have some type of padded, soft interior with modular velcro pieces to create compartments for lenses, etc.
Bleu de Chauffe has integrated that well in this bag, by making the padded camera-y part of the bag a completely separate insert. Slide that part out and you just have a nice little leather satchel. Because of that, the usable interior storage space for gear is a little smaller than the ol’ lunch bag.
Here are some features of the bag I found useful in a real life context which reveal to me that they thought through the bag’s utility, not just its aesthetic appeal:
- The side pockets fit a phone perfectly for when I didn’t have a jacket pocket to put it in.
- The leather part of the bag has an open pocket in front which is useful for things like spare batteries and memory cards, etc.
- There is a removable slim zipper bag that snaps into place in the back of the bag, which is a feature on many of their bags. I put an AirTag in this bag plus other random accessories that were slim enough.
- The straps that close the top flap have buckles so you can loosen or tighten them—but you don’t have to fumble with those buckles to open and close the bag. The actual closure is made by collar studs.
- The padded part for the camera gear itself has its own side pockets, etc. where I put my remote trigger, etc.
- The flapped ears on either side help add a little extra protection when the bag’s top is closed but you’re holding it by the handle and the sides gape open a bit. These made me feel a little better both for protection from something like rain but also to make it a little harder to someone to reach into the bag with their hand.
Here are the downsides of the bag:
- The satchel style top with a handle on it is less than ideal. As you can see from the photos of me holding it, the bag hangs un-evenly due to this, and the sides gape open a bit (which is why those ears are there). That said, I could tighten the straps with the buckles and it would gape less. But the design issue is still there.
- The handle is very sturdy but uncomfortable to hold all day on account of the firmness of the leather and the texture of the stitching. I wrapped a neckerchief around the handle on day 2 of Pitti to solve for this.
- Leather is kinda heavy and bulky, with the leather straps and buckles adding even more bulk. The way I travel is to put my camera bag inside a tote bag which also carries my MacBook, and that’s my “personal item” on the plane alongside my carry-on suitcase. The Bologne camera bag stuffed inside the second bag Bleu de Chauffe sent me—the Zoom travel bag—was just a little heavy and bulky to be honest. It barely fit under the seat in front of me. I half expected one of the airlines not to let me take it on for looking too big (but they didn’t). On smaller planes, it might not have fit at all. On the return journey, I ended up just zipping the Zoom bag into my checked bag, putting my Macbook in my carry-on suitcase, and carrying just the Bologne camera bag as my personal item.
- I like navy, but in leather I tend to prefer rich browns as the color.
My conclusion
The leather camera bags from Bleu de Chauffe are great. Well-made, beautiful, functional. For the same reason I don’t use a nylon backpack, I haven’t used a nylon camera bag. I love natural materials and good craftsmanship. Some may talk about it in the framework of luxury, but “luxury” isn’t the thing I care about so much as just a satisfyingly tactile and well-considered experience. I believe that same impulse is behind so many of the nice products we all enjoy so much—whether it be the excellent build and design of an Apple product, or the delight of a mechanical watch, or the joy of a suit crafted from nice cloth in a good fit.
So it’s awesome to have a well made camera bag in lovely French leather that has been designed not just to look good, but to work functionally well for its intended purpose. Its primary downside of the satchel-style flap with handle was not annoying enough in practice that I’d recommend against it. The smaller Bologne one I tested is a good size in the mirrorless camera world when you have just a couple lenses, and said size balances the other downsides of weight and bulk well. The larger Arles bag, I presume, would have the same pros and cons I’ve illuminated here, just with more space!
Thanks for reading.
