03Sep Tamrac Rally 6 3446 camera bag Review
I’ve been on the pre-order list for the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera since the day I got my hands on it at NAB. But after multiple delays and a sketchy list of features, I canceled my order, got my $1000 refund, and picked up a Canon 6d. I’ve had a love hate relationship with the 6d, at the original list price I felt like it wasn’t worth it, but at the sale price of $1499 I felt it was well worth it to pull the trigger.
Originally I was looking for a good travel bag for the BMPCC and came across the Tamrac Rally 6 camera bag, but it ended up being a great travel bag for the Canon 6d. It looks like a messenger bag, but has enough room to hold a few lenses and there’s even enough room to support lenses as large as the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 while still remaining small enough to rest on the hip.
I chose the Tamrac Rally 6 because it was the only bag out of the “Rally” series that didn’t incorporate a laptop or tablet pouch. With bags like this the manufacture always tries to fit a laptop pouch on the back side of the bag. With a laptop inside, this padded compartment ends up being very uncomfortable and puts the LCD screen of your laptop or tablet in danger. Sure the compartment is padded, but do a little running or jump off of something and the bag will slam against your hip. You might get away with it once our twice, but after awhile you’ll end up with a cracked screen.
The Tamrac Rally 6 only gives you enough room for a manual or a few documents. This prevents you from being tempted to use the back compartment for anything larger. It also makes the bag a little more flexible on the hip.
Looking inside you can see that I’ve divided the Rally 6 into 3 compartments. I have the Canon 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.8 stored at the bottom of the left and right sections and I’ve left plenty of room in the center compartment for the Canon 6d with 17-35mm f2.8 lens attached. None of the lenses touch the bottom of the bag when attached to the camera so I’ve left a lens and body cap at the bottom of the center section.
The front pouch has just enough room to hold a battery charger, spare usb cables, a quick release plate (Manfrotto 501PL) and the Dinkum flex clamp. The zipper is held in with double stitches and feels very well put together.
You can see the small handle as well as the back flap. As I said before the back pouch isn’t designed for much more than papers and that’s the reason I picked up the Tamrac Rally 6 instead of the Rally 5 or Rally 7. The 5 has a pouch designed for tablets and the 7 is designed to hold up to a 15 inch laptop. I don’t want to carry either of those on my hip.
Over all I’m pretty happy with the Tamrac Rally 6 camera bag, see the video above for other thoughts. This is the first post using this format, so let me know what you think. I apologize for the sub-par audio quality in the video, I was in a hurry and just grabbed a Gopro hero 3 with a random mic. The random mic turned out to be the V-mic that had all the noise issues. I should probably give those away or toss them. Maybe a giveaway is in order.
