It’s been over a year since I took delivery of my Billingham Hadley Pro. In that time, I’ve acquired a completely different camera system than the Canon 5D Mark II that I started out with: Fujifilm’s fantastic X-Pro 1, complete with the 18mm, 35mm, 60mm and 18-55mm zoom.
Read on to find out how I use my Hadley Pro with the X-Pro 1.
While the Hadley Pro was great with the 5D, it is simply perfect for the X-Pro 1. The body plus all four lenses, spare batteries, filter and lens pen all fit without the bag being full, leaving space for a few more small accessories and even an iPad mini. With everything in place, there is still space to work with this bag – changing lenses and batteries is no problem.
My setup is to have the 60mm lens beneath the 18 on the left hand side with one of the small dividers that Billingham provides to separate them. I use the 60mm far less often than the other lenses as it’s quite slow to focus (but is incredibly sharp). In the central space, I have the 35mm (my favourite of the 4 lenses) and in the right hand side is the X-Pro 1 body with the 18-55mm lens mounted.
The iPad mini fits comfortably in the space between the inner padding and the front left pocket. The batteries, filters, memory card and lens pen all fit happily in the two front pockets, leaving plenty of space for a few other accessories.
Overall, the Billingham Hadley Pro works fantastically well for this type of setup, as well as for much larger cameras. I can’t recommend it enough if you’re looking for a classically styled, extremely high quality, buy-it-once camera bag.