Peak Design Camera Cube (Medium)

Product Information

Ultra-protective yet easily accessible, Peak Design Camera Cubes take the pain and hassle out of traveling with photo, video, or drone gear. Designed to mount securely in any Peak Design Travel Bag, Camera Cubes give you custom organization and protection, whether you’re carrying a small mirrorless kit or a full professional creative setup. While the nylon padding isn’t as robust as more expensive camera bag inserts, it’s nevertheless capable of offering effective protection and reliable accessibility to your gear.

Perhaps best of all, it doesn’t look at all like a camera bag. Unfortunately, it looks like the blue version is discontinued, but the aloe/drab one looks great and the orange version definitely stands out. The 31L version accommodates a Medium camera cube, which can house a pro-size DSLR with a lens attached and 3-4 lenses, or 3 small lenses and a flash. If you decide to use the rest of the capacity for camera gear too, you can obviously take much more, but it won’t be well protected by the cube. You can also carry a 15-inch laptop. The 15″ protective laptop sleeve has a unique adjustable feature, making sure those with smaller laptops can easily retrieve their device, without having to ‘fish’ for it. I’m not a fan of how heavy it is, but as long as your airline has lenient carry-on limits, you can still squeeze it onboard, which is what I manage to do every time I fly for overseas work. Rear padded portion features some serious padding and a unique design to increase airflow while hiking.Then, I tried to put the Cube in my normal hard travel luggage. It fit like a glove, and I had quite a bit of room to put clothes and other accessories (non-photographic) in that case. Success! You can see the Medium Cube all zipped up in the lower left of my travel case. I had the whole right side available for my other travel needs and a bit of space at the top left. The Camera Cubes use a 400D nylon canvas that’s polyurethane and DWR coated on each side. This is similar to the Wash Pouch and Tech Pouch—although the camera cubes are more rigid, with some firm padding. There are also some YKK #8 zippers. Having said that, you can access all your gear (including stuff stored on top of the padded dividers) from the side access zippers.

The laptop sleeve is on the flap that accesses the camera compartment, which puts it squarely in your way if you’re attempting to get to your camera without taking the bag off. It also means your laptop will be moving each time the flap has to be undone to open the bag. These inserts are often adjustable so that you can remove and reposition them depending on the size of your camera, lenses, and other accessory storage requirements.The Anvil 27 has room for everything you need on a wilderness trek, at least as far as photography is concerned. The camera compartment has space for larger DSLRs with battery grips and/or with zoom lenses up to 18″ (35.56 cm) long attached to them. There’s plenty of space for extra lenses, flashes, chargers, etc. as well. The grab handles at both sides of the rear are a great inclusion too. The tripod holder is at the front of the bag, which is pretty unique – most offer a tripod holder at the bottom, which makes the bag impossible to stand up and clunky to put down. It’s a little hard to get in and out of the lowest internal compartment since the size zip doesn’t run low enough. Also, I find roll-top bags a little fiddly and unnecessary with their additional steps to get gear in and out of. The foam dividers work really well too. (Tamrac claims that it used over 10 foam types in the construction of this bag!) I have two images showing the version one and two versions of the protective flex-fold Shelf Divider. The lighter one is the second version. This is the only protective flex-fold divider that is shipped with the first version of the Peak Design Small Camera Cube, and is the only first version camera cube that I had access to, allowing for this side by side look. You can see that the hook part of the divider connection in the second version is better color matched with the interior fabric of the camera cube.