Union Street and Bowery
If you’ve ever found yourself bored with your local camera store bag selection and wish for a day you can be seen lugging around a non-nylon-hey-look-at-me-camera-bag, then you might want to check out ONA.
ONA is going after the idea that Camera bags and Accessories can be stylish and well made. By well made, I mean seriously well made. The two bags I picked up are the Union Street Ranger Tan and the Bowery Field Tan. Each bag is made of canvas, leather accents and brass hardware. The shoulder straps are essentially seat-belts, but in a good way, however not quite as wide. The Union Street, along with a leather bottom has extra padding on the strap to help with comfort and weight. Fully loaded, the Union will start pulling on your shoulder after a while and I’m a big guy so that saying something.
Bowery – Field Tan
As for the Canvas used, its waxed to help with weatherizing the bags. It gives them a welcomed rustic look. I’m not going to convey this well in writing but the feel of this is also something to experience. Very well done.
The Bowery
The Bowery is designed to double as a bag insert and It does this by allowing for the shoulder straps to be un-clipped from the bag. The idea being that this makes it easier for the Bowery to fit in a larger bag. While this may be ONA’s intent I don’t see this as a realistic one as you would need quite a large and cumbersome bag to accommodate the Bowery as an insert. But hey that’s just my opinion, I’m sure someone out there is proving me wrong as I type. While I’m not crazy about the clips I found that the ability for them to swivel was a nice surprise. This helped kept the shoulder strap from awkwardly twisting. The Bowery Always seems to lay just right across the side because of this.
My main concern with the Bowery before it arrived was its size. I wanted a bag that would accommodate an SLR and one or two walk around lenses. I was not disappointed. Not only did this bag fit my 6D but I was also able to squeeze in a 17-40mm, 50mm 1.4, charger and extra battery. Now because I intend to use this a just a day bag I don’t plan on configuring it this way but instead I was just interested in how I could organize it.
Canon 6D with 50mm 1.4, 17-40mm, Charger and extra battery.
It should be noted that to do this I use an extra insert I didn’t have use for from the Union Street bag and packed the Bowery with the 50mm attached, not the 17-40mm. I see myself normally using this bag with 17-40mm attached. So far I’ve found the Bowery extremely comfortable to carry around. And even though my wife gives me a hard time about it looking like a Man Purse, I don’t mind. This is one sexy bag.
The Union Street
The Union Street is a large (but not too large) messenger bag with room to spare. It’s tall enough for a 13″ mac book pro/air, 70-200 f4 and a flash like the 580ex. Its also tall enough for a mark 3 with the 24-105 attached. Storage is in abundance on the Union as well. The front pocket has room enough for a plethora of accessories, car keys, cell phone, etc. But even fully loaded the Union sits up right very well. The leather base is designed in such a way the bag does not want to tip over easily. Even the rear pocket has a nice design to it, a magnetic clasp to keep the pocket closed, something I would liked to have seen on the Bowery. But all in not perfect. I do have one complaint, after repeated use the insert material under the Velcro strap securing the laptop compartment is wearing a bit quickly. A minor issue on an other wise great set of camera bags and a welcome addition to my camera gear.
In all I’m very pleased with both bags and believe anyone looking for stye without sacrificing function just may find a bag in ONA. I’ll quit rambling on…Below are some more pictures to give you a better Idea and, hopefully help you decide for yourself.
 Bowery  Bowery with Canon 50D with attached 17-40mm and 40mm pancake  Union Street  Insert wear from Velcro |
 Union Street Packed with an iPad, Flash, 17-40mm, 50D/40mm prime, light meter, Phone, blah blah blah yada yada yada it holds a bunch of camera crap  Union Street  Union Street |
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