Lowepro Passport Sling III

Posted on    by

The Billingham Hadley Pro and Sirui MyStory 13 that I recently just did posts on are great bags for traveling, but they’re really quite large to lug around for our weekend brunches and dinner outings – since the only things I bring along is a camera body, a compact lens, and an iPad. I didn’t want to spend gobbles of money on another camera bag, so specifically checked out small low-priced camera bags. The Lowepro Passport Sling III I decided on isn’t the usual kind of camera bags I’ve owned, and my first sling-type bag after years of using messenger and backpack-type camera bags. This first post on it will cover my first impressions for it, with a follow-up post later once I’ve spent some more time on it.

I use Amazon as my yardstick to find out international pricing for items, and on it, Sling III retails for USD44.95/SGD61. The bag is also carried here both authorized resellers of Lowepro equipment and also online portals, and seems to be normally priced at SGD66, with some online resellers sending it to an absurd high of SGD143. But I finally found a reseller on Lazada listing it for SGD50. So, some nice savings there from Amazon pricing too and standard list price too.

The bag is light, and making use of the synthetic material that’s commonly used in bundled manufacturer laptop and camera bags when you buy new equipment. Once you’ve removed the inner padded insert, it’s also collapsible until it’s mostly flat. That’s a nice bonus: I can bring this bag out on vacations too by squishing it and dropping it into a small luggage case! The stitching looks solid and not like it’ll tear at the first sign of stress. The zippers have little loops around their eyelets too; another nice touch that makes it easier to use the zips. The bag should also be washable since there doesn’t seem to be metallic parts in the bag’s construction, but I’ll have to check further on that later.

The inner padded camera compartment has a single divider so you get two smaller compartments if you wish. The compartment material however is thin and doesn’t offer thick cushioning – unlike standard messenger-type camera bags. I reckon this was to reduce the overall weight of the bag and also material costs. Still, no matter what the manufacturer might say, you really don’t want to be dropping this bag laden with lenses and camera bodies onto concrete: the thin cushioning isn’t going to provide much protection from impact! But I have several spare padded inner compartments from salvaging my old camera bags that I’ve since disposed, so the Sling III’s compartment is getting tossed out in lieu of the thicker ones.

The bag base isn’t a regular rectangular shape and is flexible without a rigid form, which means that any small that you drop into the main compartment – e.g. because if you’re in a hurry – will mean they will jiggle and move around the bottom of the bag. I’ll need to be mindful that pointed objects – especially keys – don’t end up scratching equipment that’s placed outside the padded compartment. There are also a number of small exterior compartments which are not zipped. So, handy, but not quite suitable for me to place valuables in them, but should be OK for coins, receipts and lens caps.

The slightly oversized tablet sleeve in the main compartment can easily fit the iPad Pro 11 with the Smart Keyboard Folio, though that looks about as large an iPad from the current range that you can fit in. It won’t fit the iPad Pro 12.9″s.

The shoulder strap is functional but has has quite a bit of excess to its maximum strap length. So, I can extend the strap all the way almost to knee length if I’m inclined to, though it’s far more comfortable for it to be slung around my lower back. The excess strap needs to be folded outwardly, not inwardly. That’s an unusual approach and can look a little untidy. I would have far preferred that excess strap be clipped with the length of the strap, like how other messenger bags do this. The provided shoulder pad itself is also thin, though adjustable and long to cover quite a bit of your shoulder area. Importantly, it’s also removable – which means I can swap this out and replace it with the better cushioned shoulder pad from the Hadley Pro.

At first glance, looks more like a lady’s handbag than a camera bag!
This is the third iteration of the bag. There are also some minor color variants depending on the bag version you choose: I went with the all black version.
Bag’s main compartment. It goes pretty deep inside. I’ll do a separate post later on what I can packed into the Sling III later.
The padded inner compartment with divider. The cushioning is thin, and the compartment insert uses up just part of the bag’s main compartment.
Zip expands the compartment by 30% according to the product spec. You can also see the kind of loops secured around the zipper eyelet.
Now, this I didn’t like – the way excess strap is folded and then stuffed into the strap cavity. Thankfully the bag and strap is all black, so you can’t really see it until up-close.

I’ll do a follow-up post later on how much stuff I can pack into the Sling III, so more to come soon!