Make Your Own Camera Bag

What You'll Be Creating

When you can, I recommend you buy a good quality camera bag to protect your kit. They are designed for bumps and knocks and in most cases come with a waterproof lining and cover. If it's not possible, however, for you to buy one, or you just have lots of kit and need another bag to throw stuff in, then this tutorial is for you. I’ll show you how to make a kit bag for a fraction of the price of a dedicated camera bag.

What You’ll Need

The supplies for making your own camera bag are all readily to buy, re-use, scavenge, or find second-hand.

• You can pick up a suitably sized sports bag, which cheaply from most sport stores or online. The one shown here was about £15

A regular hold-all from a sports store

• A roll or strip of foam. This large piece was more than enough for the job and cost £6. Try stores that sell things for your home, like cushion paddings, to find this

A strip of foam for our padding

• Sticky-back Velcro. This was about £2.50 for a small roll. Available from most DIY or home stores (try the sewing section)

Velcro for sticking our foam in the bag

Make Your Bag

1. Roughly measure your foam against the sides and bottom of your bag cut it into the correct sizes
2. Peel the back off your Velcro and stick it to the inside of your sports bag It doesn’t matter which thing the rougher bit of the Velcro sticks to, but in this case I've avoided putting it on the foam in case the foam is ever out of the bag so that it doesn't stick to or pull on anything else.
   

   

   Stick your Velcro to the bag

3. Stick the other part of the Velcro to your foam, making sure it matches up in relation to where the strip is on your bag

   

   Velcro stuck to the foam

4. Place your foam inside the bag, sticking the relevant bits of Velcro together.

   

   Stick the foam to the bag

Hoorah, you now have a DIY padded bag. Keep a piece of foam to slot in over the top and away you go!