http://kellymoorebag.com/mens/kelly-boy/kelly-boy-bag-brown.html

I have been using the Kelly Moore “Kelly Boy” camera bag since my girlfriend gave it to me as a gift for Christmas a year ago. In that time I have used the bag a lot. I have carried it casually on social gatherings, shot three weddings with it, and made it my main camera bag. I’ll say it clearly right at the outset, it is my favourite camera bag, and the one I would reach for in most portrait shooting situations. Does that mean I think it is without faults, no! No camera bag is without faults, in fact, I suspect it is impossible for a bag designer to make a perfect camera bag, that is why most keen photographers have a few different designs for different situations. Personally I have a Lowepro camera rucksack, which I chose to take on holiday, but for shooting weddings, it had to be the “Kelly Boy”.

Firstly, the unique selling point of the “Kelly Boy” bag is its appearance. This is a man bag for your camera. It resembles nothing so much as a stylish courier bag or business bag. No one would look at it and think, camera geek, and in fact that is true of all of the Kelly Moore designs. This is its strength and its weakness of course:

Strength because it looks great and you can’t help but feel relaxed about using it at a wedding or social gathering as it looks cool and fits in well.

Weakness because in some ways it places style above function.

OK, so you get that I like how this bag looks, well what else do I like about it? The main thing is the top cover which folds completely back to hang down out of the way of the main compartment allowing you full and unrestricted access to your camera and lenses. In use at a photoshoot this is pretty much the exclusive way I use the bag. You simply reach down and grab the next lens as you chat with your subject without breaking stride or flow, this is priceless in portraiture. As long as you can limit yourself to the camera and three spare lenses, or in my case, the camera, attached lens, two spare lenses and a flashgun, the bag is perfect for being convenient and unobtrusive in use. The front pockets zip up easily and hold enough essentials for a shoot, like cards, batteries, and in my case, my pocket wizards. So in summary this always holds what I need for a portrait shoot, and I can’t ask more than that in a convenient and stylish package. I usually try to have a larger bag handy with my other lenses and bodies somewhere nearby, like in the car, as a base-store, but work from the “Kelly Boy” once I have chosen the lenses for my needs.

On the negative side, I couldn’t live without a good photo-rucksack as they have many of the features that I find missing in the Kelly Boy bag. Padding is an important  missing feature for me, the Kelly Boy compartments can be resized with velcro tabs as in so many camera bags, but they are simply cards covered in the man-made leather style material the bag is made from. They are in short, useful dividers but not padded or particularly protective; thankfully most modern kit is fairly sturdy and doesn’t need extensive padding to stop gentle bumping in normal-photo-session use, so this is a problem but not a major one in practice. It is worth noting that I have seen photos of the “Kelly Boy” bag with a more padded interior, so I am not sure whether there are more padded versions available. It would be worth checking with Kelly Moore about this if you are planning a purchase and this worries you. The more serious issue I have, is that the flap is held down by two unobtrusive magnets which are great in normal use, but let the top pop up too easily if you have picked the bag up at an awkward angle, say from your car boot for example; it is possible to have a lens slip out with potentially damaging consequenses. (This did happen to me, and now I’m super careful about it). I would like to see Kelly put an internal cover on the bag to hold things safely in the compartments during travel, but which could be easily removed in use. Another worry for me in the rainy West of Scotland is the gap left on either side of the flap when closed which can let rain in. I have been caught in a few rain showers and I have been forcibly holding these as tightly covered as I can to minimise ingress, but a nylon rain cover, or a fold out flap on the main cover to deflect rain if caught out would help. Of course I would never take the Kelly Boy out deliberately in the rain, but the reality is that you can get caught out!

The bag has the now obligatory slot behind the camera and lens compartments for a laptop or similar. I have no strong feelings about this, but I can’t imagine that I would use this bag to hold a laptop. The bag is all about casual and handy support of camera and lenses in my view, and with my 5dMK2, 3 lenses and a laptop, this would be an unpleasant beast to carry casually; certainly it doesn’t take up much space in the “Kelly Boy”, and so I don’t think it has cut down on spaces for the main purpose of the bag.

So my summary, if you are a guy, and you want a stylish bag to carry your camera that lets you access your stuff with casual ease, then this is your bag. There are other messenger style bags available, but this is beautifully finished and looks special with it’s detailing and designed appearance. If Kelly Moore was to make improvements to the bag to address my minor concerns, then I would probably want to buy a new one, and that is about as good an endorsement of my experience with the Kelly Boy bag as I can give.

This is a great bag, and I’m happy to endorse it with the minor but important provisos that I have listed.

You will also enjoy Kelly Moore’s excellent website:

http://kellymoorebag.com/

Note: My girlfriend bought herself the Kelly Moore B-Hobo at the same time, and might add a guest review of her own shortly?

(She also supplied the photos of the bag on me)

This post starts with the confession that I have sold my lovely Panasonic LX3, written about in an earlier post. The LX3 is compact, has a decent sensor for a compact camera, slightly larger than average, and a sensible 10 megapixel file to achieve decent noise performance. Additionally the Leica badged lens, is well regarded and has a great focal range for quality in the very wide to slightly telephoto range. Why then did I sell the LX3? The answer is that I barely used it. As I write this, I am looking at one of my favourite landscapes, it is on my wall, and I love it. It was taken with the LX3 in my first month of using it. The trouble is that I have only learned now that it wasn’t the camera for me.

The problem may seem odd, but when I lived with it for a while I realised it was simply too big to carry around casually. The excellent lens doesn’t retract into the body, so you couldn’t slip it into a pocket. In effect for me it was a smaller lighter version of carrying my DSLR, and I thought I was buying it as compact. It had a nice compact leather case, and I occasionally slung that over my shoulder, but that wasn’t much more convenient for me than my DSLR with a single 17-85 lens in a basic bag, so I tended to carry a DSLR instead. Great as the LX3 is, it still has a small sensor, and so as a portrait photographer, it doesn’t give the magical Depth of Field control that my large sensor DSLR does, hence another reason why the reduction in size wasn’t enough to tempt me; if I was a landscape photographer then it would be more worthwhile. (The amazing landscape photographer, Charlie Waite sang it’s praises as a compact walkaround tool in a recent edition of Amateur Photographer.)

So the result of this thinking is that I have bought a new compact camera. The Canon S95 is genuinely compact, and even fits in a jeans pocket. It has a 28 to 105 (I think) equivalent lens, the same larger but still small sensor, RAW files like the LX3, the sensible 10 megapixel files and a bucketload of fun toys like HDR and arty filter programmes that I’ll probably never use. This is simply about first impressions, but they are very good. This camera travels with me; I’m not going to be too precious about protective cases. Fine for storage, or for putting in a bag, but if I’m out for a meal or a stroll around town, then this will slip in a pocket and be a useful tool. I’ll say more about it once I’ve had more time with it.

This is a casual snap outside Glasgow’s Central Station using streetlights only. (ISO1600 f2 1/10th sec)

I also have the Sony Nex 5, and I hope it will take a place in my collection of cameras, and I’ll say more about that shortly, but at least, I now think I could be happy with my S95 for casual carrying, and my DSLR for the most of my photography.

Lorna being playful:

You may gauge the group sobriety by observing that glasses were being shared for photographs! Now who really owns them between Donald and Lorna?

Noisy, but a very smooth noise pattern.

Handling is fine on the camera, most of what you want is quick to access, even exposure compensation is quite intuitive and since I have drifted into using “Aperture Priority” so much and using exposure compensation for fine adjustments that’s important to me. I used to have a 400D and so it feels just like that, very Canon, very straightforward. The only missing quick button for me is metering mode which is a menu item; at least you can put it on your “my menu” list which allows you to access your own favourite menu items really easily and quickly. So all is rosy for usability, but the right hand-grip is small. If like me you are used to a 40D or a 50D hand-grip, an you have big hands, then you will find it annoying. This is a travel and spare SLR for me however, so I am getting used to that grip and it’s far from a show-stopper. If you haven’t used a larger SLR, I doubt whether you’ll even notice this.

I have played a little with the movie mode, but truthfully I can’t see me getting into that stuff. It’s not all that easy to use, and I think you would have to use a tripod, as well as a separate sound recorder to mix the sound and video together later as the handling noise and the focus noise (even if manually focussed) are seriously obtrusive. It is fun to do video with awesome “depth of field” control unlike any camcorder, but don’t kid yourself into thinking you would use it casually, you won’t. Anyway, I’m a photographer, so I really don’t care.

So I have a nice little SLR with me at all times now, my work backpack even has a little compartment for it and it fits so much better than my beloved 40D, so I’ll enjoy that luxury, and I’ll keep you updated on my findings as I go along.

Next step, on my first evening of ownership was to go to the websites. I liked the Panasonic custom fitting leather cases, but they are expensive, and no-one actually seemed to have UK stock. I loved them though, they add to the retro look of the camera, like a rangefinder case from earlier days. Next stop, as I didn’t want to order one from Japan, at £70 plus posting was the Lowepro site. This has a helpful PDF file listing the LX3 and telling you all the cases that fit the camera. They also gave the dimensions of the interior. I measured the required dimensions to accommodate the slightly fuller figure (in compact camera terms) of the LX3 and discovered that they were lying, almost all of them were too flat/thin to take the protruding lens.

Next day I went to Jessops with my LX3 in its protective polythene wrapper and tried another 10 cases, none of which fitted, including one which is offered by Jessops in an online bundle deal with the LX3! Finally success, I found only one, the Lowepro Apex 30 AW. I bought it there and then. My camera was now protected, and these cases are well made and include belt loops and shoulder straps for hillwalking etc, and this case would be ideal for that purpose. It still felt a little bulky and of course had to be taken out of the case to be used. The fancy Panasonic Leather one allows you to use the LX3 in the case. I looked again and found a UK dealer over a December weekend who took my payment and promised to send it next working day.

The next working day, Monday arrived with a glorious email, and I kid you not saying, “out of stock, we apologise for any incontinence“. So I phoned and cancelled my order as they were unsure when the stock might arrive. So finally, exasperated I ordered the Japanese suppliers original Panasonic case, paid by pay pal and settled in for a long wait. Actually it came on the next Thursday. That’s ordered late Monday morning Delivered Thursday sometime, from Japan to Scotland, UK. In case you care, the very courteous business was:

http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/giftshop-jp/

So do I like the case? I’ve used it about two weeks and I love it. It slips into a pocket neatly, as long as its a jacket pocket, it slings over a shoulder nicely if you have no jacket, it looks fantastic and you can even attach it to a tripod without removing the case. When you need to remove it, one simple screw into the tripod socket, which has an aluminium finger wheel is all it takes. It’s expensive, but it is really well made and wraps the LX3 in about as small a space as you could manage  while still offering physical protection.

Wouldn’t it be nice if manufacturers actually gave us a case in the box? I wonder how many people scratch these screens before they get one.

Here it is:

And with the top cover removed. In use you can just undo the 2 side-studs and it will hang by the bottom one so that you can take pictures instantly without working out where to pop the cover:

And the rear view showing access to controls:

And fully removed:

Here’s the excellent but different Lowepro:

and the back:

Now note the natty built in raincover, perfect for outdoor types. Remember this is a perfect handheld landscape camera with it’s 24mm lens.

And finally, the sleepy LX3 settling down for a snooze……..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

night-night

Here are some comparisons with a Canon Ixus 850

So what of the LX3? It is a little smaller than the Canon G10, but still a little larger than a true compact due to its permanently protruding lens. The bottom line is that it won’t be comfortable in an inside pocket, but most jacket pockets will be fine with it. It is small enough for most of us, but if it must slip into an inside pocket, look elsewhere.

Features:

24mm to 60mm zoom

720p HD video

RAW files

Full manual control possible

Flash hotshoe

The next thing I have strong feelings about are the the controls on the Panasonic. They are a mixture of tiny switches and a little fiddly joystick and they are just north of horrible. The camera feels like it is cast in solid steel and feels like a quality mini-rangefinder, but the controls are pure “Toys’R'Us”. You get used to them, and although you can mis-hit the joystick even after practice, they generally don’t get in the way, they just don’t inspire confidence. This is a problem for Panasonic because the user interface with its rotary dial on the G10 deserves awards, it’s brilliant, simple and solid. Overall though, it is a pleasant camera in the hands mainly due to a really good clear screen and a really solid weighty feel. The menus are simple enough, clearly laid out and won’t cause any of us any great problems.

In use, the Panny is pleasant and fairly responsive (quick to respond to controls like the shutter), but it’s not capable of instant response; as a reviewer said elsewhere, it never feels like a problem; I would go with that, it would not be a choice for sport photography, it would be too slow, but for other uses, street, landscape, portraiture it feels fine. At ISO 80 and 100 it gives gorgeous results with real detail and no noise, by ISO 400 there is noise but in my view it’s totally useable, but by 800, you are hitting the buffers, you will get some useable shots, but it’ll depend on them not having a lot of black areas and low light patches that tend to show noise. When you look closely at ISO 800 in jpegs, the noise reduction has taken a sledgehammer to the fine detail, but from a more normal viewing distance it looks OK. 1600 ISO is as poor as you would expect on a compact camera with a little sensor.

The wide lens is really nice, it is surprisingly wide in use, and would certainly delight landscape and street photographers. It could have done with a little more at the telephoto end but again you buy the Panasonic to indulge wide to normal angle photography like landscape and street, and for this it is a great camera. Now that Adobe have released a compatible camera raw version and Lightroom 2.2 also supports it, I have tried RAW files with it. It is certainly a luxury and they do give a little more latitude for adjustments than the jpegs, but for many users of the little panny it won’t be worth the bother, the exposure and internal adjustments of the jpeg make the pictures really nice straight out of the camera. I am using RAW and Jpeg together because I don’t need the speed and I never want to be stuck with a picture that I can’t adjust as much as I want in Lightroom. So as A DSLR user’s carry about camera, this ticks the right boxes and is nice below 800 iso.

So my first impressions: I have had this for about 2 weeks, and have carried it with me a lot and it has been easy to have in a pocket or my work bag So it scores well for it’s primary purpose, always being handy. It is pleasant to use and has decent noise performance for a small sensor camera if you don’t have unrealistic expectations. Overall I’m happy with it, but I’m always aware that you need to live with a camera for a whiloe to really know for sure, so I’ll post an update or two as I go along.

Some pics:

ISO 80. Wemyss Bay Victorian Station

ISO 800 Rothesay Ferry Leaving in Darkness

ISO 800: An Eagle Owl from the Loch Lomond Bird of Prey Centre

An unidentified Shark-Like fish lying on the viewing tunnel of the Loch Lomond Sea Life centre. Very low light!

ISO 80: And finally an HDR of the foredeck of the Gourock-Dunoon ferry in good light.