Lowepro Commercial AW shoulder camera bag for professional photography review
A review of the Lowepro Commercial AW shoulder camera bag for professional photography.
I'm a professional portrait and wedding photographer. If you are new to this site you might like to read why I review photography equipment which I use for my business before reading on. My aim is to provide the information I would be looking for when trying to decide if something would help or hinder my photography business. You won't find specification details ad nauseam, or comparisons between the incomparable, but you will find out how this professional photographer rates the equipment for professional use.
Lets get something straight, right away. No camera bag is ever big enough. The reason they don't make camera bags as big as a house is because you wouldn't be able to lug them around. Sadly a compromise must be reached between a camera bag the size of a house and one which you can actualy carry. That compromise might just be the Lowepro Commercial.
I use my Lowepro Commercial AW mainly for my wedding photography but it isn't the only shoulder bag I use, I also have a smaller Lowepro Magnum AW shoulder bag. If there is one thing I have struggled with over the years it is camera bags and I would bet other professionals have the same problem.
One camera with one lens and a flash gun is easy to carry around. You don't see the general public struggling to lug their camera (singular) around. It doesn't matter if the camera is a lightweight compact or a top of the range pro SLR. Professionals don't have one camera, one lens, one flash gun or indeed one of anything. For wedding photography I usually take three camera bodies, maybe four flash guns and several lenses from a 50mm f1.4 to a 80-200mm f2.8. This all adds up to a lot of weight and a large volume so I need a large bag.
The Lowepro Commercial is such a bag.
My Lowepro Commercial is full, very full. Everything in it has a place where it lives partly so I know where it is and partly because the bag is so full everything fits in it like a jigsaw. If a gnat wanted to hitch a ride it would have to wait for the next bag.
It is also very heavy and my shoulder is not best mates with it. My wife tells me I should get a roller bag for wedding photography. She's right, except of course she isn't because of one little problem. Roller bags suffer from Dalek syndrome - they don't do stairs. Well yes I know the modern Daleks fly around willy-nilly, but I mean proper Daleks like the sort Tom Baker had to deal with. No flying Daleks for him, just talking electric dogs and a nice line in knitwear.
So there you have it. The Lowepro Commercial is a big bag that will hold all the gear you really need and it does stairs.
Lowepro Commercial AW summary
The Lowepro Commercial is a big bag that will hold all the gear you really need and it does stairs. It has a water proof cover and is made of strong rip-stop stuff that goes on forever unless it gets zapped by a Dalek.
The acid test - would I buy another?
Yes I would, but that Dalek and I are going to have words.