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Be careful trusting the strap on your Ona Berlin bag!


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Hi Everyone,

 

Yesterday, while riding my motorcycle to a photoshoot, I had a considerable scare. The loop which holds the strap onto my brand new (not two weeks old) Ona Berlin bag let go! It seems the stitching process had so perforated the leather, which necks down to a tiny thickness at the joint, as to leave a very fragile joint.

 

Luckily, the strap, which was still attached at the other end, caught on my jacket and I was able to trap the bag between my arm and torso. There was certainly more than 20k USD worth of Leica M and glass in it at the time! :eek:

 

I have sent an e-mail with the attached picture to Ona customer care. Normally I would just send the bag back to the retailer and ask for a replacement. But since the original Berlin is no longer in production I assume Ona will repair this one and send it back.

 

I'll let you know how they resolve this.

 

Jeff

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I would be tempted to get your money back from the dealer you bought it from. It is quite easy to repair and actually improve the strength of the tag and while they where at it improve the strenght at the other tag. Looking at the general stitching quality there is an awfull lot of room for improvement without adding to the cost of the bag.

I spent many years sorting out those sort of problems when employed as a production engineer with the German company Pfaff. Happy days.

BrianP

 

Ps They have gone overboard on securing the strap which fastens the flap ( studs and stitching ) but used 1 row of stitching to secure the loop which is a high stress point.

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I have a suspicion looking at the bag that their core business could be fashion bags in a market that is not particularly price sensitive and they make camera bags as an addition to the range of products.Nothing wrong with this and it is a very attractive bag. Now consider Billingham the UK firm who make a massive range of high quality bags. Their core business was fishing gear 30 years ago plus.i could not imagine one of their bags failing whatever the load. Please do not think I am making a case for people to buy Billingham as I am not intentionally . I have done work with them about 25 years ago and supplied sewing machines to them and just using this as an example.

BrianP

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I have a Billingham Hadley Pro which has been used fairly hard over the past 10+ years. After that long, it is just beginning to look broken in a bit. I have never had a failure of any kind with this bag, or the other two Billinghams I use.

 

ONA bags are nice to look at, but there are obviously some issues with either design, materials, craftsmanship, durability/reliability or a combination thereof.

 

JMHO but no way in hell would I put a $20,000 USD Leica kit at risk by using a bag that has proven to be unreliable/unsafe. If it were me, I would get a refund on the price of the ONA and use it to get a Billingham.

 

YMMV.

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Ironically, one thing that drew me to this bag over the Billingham was the strap design. I've owned bags configured like the Billingham before, with a handle on the top flap which results in loads going through the closure straps. I've found that to be problematic. Having a joint which, as part of its function, both opens/closes and carries the whole weight of the bag seems like a poor choice. The Berlin has a carry handle which spans the opening and secures to the fixed shoulder strap mount. Surprisingly few bags are configured this way.

 

I did not recognize there were quality issues with the ONA brand, or that it was viewed as a fashion rather than functional product, as I have never read any complaints about them. Generally I am loathe to judge a product based upon one sample defect, especially when it is made of a material with natural variation like leather. But I have to admit that single row of stitching through what seems to be a paper thin piece of leather looks more like a design defect than a sample defect.

 

I think I like BrianP's idea of having a local leather shop reenforce both loops.

 

But my primary lesson learned here is to use a back pack on the rare occasions when I take the kit on my bike. Two independent straps are better than one.

 

Jeff

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A backpack full of brass and glass is even more likely to cause you serious harm if you come off your bike than a shoulder bag would.

 

Probably true. My preference is to ride my large motorcycle with hard lockable storage when taking something with me... Like a camera kit. But, since it is having engine work right now I took my little sport bike which has no compartments. The only other occasion when I ride it to a shoot is when it is to be used as a prop... Which has happened occasionally.

 

Of course, if I was really concerned with my own safety I would have been in my car. But that is another conversation all together.

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Lots of good bags to choose from, especially if you use a camera insert from somebody like billingham

 

I'd be very tempted to get my money back as this is a fundamental design issue and I would lose confidence in the whole bag. Lets say it comes back 'repaired' what happens if the other side breaks, you seriously damage yourself/kit/someone else how will you feel then ?

 

Nothing in the picture shouts one off mistake to me

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Probably true. My preference is to ride my large motorcycle with hard lockable storage when taking something with me... Like a camera kit. But, since it is having engine work right now I took my little sport bike which has no compartments. The only other occasion when I ride it to a shoot is when it is to be used as a prop... Which has happened occasionally.

 

Of course, if I was really concerned with my own safety I would have been in my car. But that is another conversation all together.

 

Someone - was it Sean Reid? - noted on this forum a long time ago, that the vibration from carrying the camera and lenses in a motorcycle storage box could shake things loose - iirc the lens he was carrying shook apart? or maybe it was the rangefinder...? Anyway, vibrations weren't good was the main point. :)

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From the Ona website:

 

 

Our name

 

In Swahili, the word ona (pronounced ō'na) means, “to feel,” “to believe,” and “to experience with the eyes.” This is the essence of photography and style.

 

So after you've felt, believed and experienced with the eyes, your Ona bag full of expensive camera gear as it crashes onto the concrete.....

 

 

....does anyone know Swahili for "Oh dear......"?

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The following is excerpted from a featured Amazon review of the ONA Union Street bag…

 

"After only 6 months of use, the stitching at the handle came undone. The last thing I want to do is carry expensive camera equipment and have the bag tip and come falling on the ground, no matter how well padded it is.

 

I contacted customer service and received this response, which I feel grossly inadequate, "we're very sorry to hear about the stitching on the handle of your bag. If we had known about your concerns on the handle beforehand, we would have informed you that the handle on top of the bag is a grab handle, intended for quick grabs, not for carrying the bag long distances. We've designed the bag with one handle because with the messenger design of the bag, having two handles would obstruct access to the inside of the bag."

 

They did not admit the design flaw, but did offer to repair it under warranty. They stitched the handle through the interior of the bag and the stitches are exposed on the interior making the bag less attractive. I'm not happy with that type of craftsmanship from the warranty repair. It solves the problem, however, for now... but I still worry about it occurring again in the future."

 

I also wonder if this comment regarding the use of cheaper labor has any relationship to these issues, which I suspect aren't the norm.

 

I needed a bigger bag for travel last year and compared ONA to Billingham and, while the ONA bags looked nice, I found that the Billingham offered better functional details such as the way the top handle was secured as well as rain protection by fully overlapping top flap, flap on rear pocket, etc. Maybe not as cosmetically appealing, but clearly designed for real world use. Others, I'm sure, are happy with their ONA bags.

 

Jeff

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I also wonder if this comment regarding the use of cheaper labor has any relationship to these issues, which I suspect aren't the norm.

 

That is a red herring, I would say.

 

If the manufacturer has made it clear that the handle on a bag isn't actually for carrying the bag, then using it to carry $20,000 of camera kit on a motorbike is using the bag for a purpose for which it wasn't designed.

 

However, why anyone would design a bag with a handle that wasn't suitable for carrying the bag with, is beyond me. But I'm not into extremely expensive bags, so what do I know?

 

I do know that the people in the Dominican Republic are perfectly capable of manufacturing leather bags to the highest quality that will last a lifetime, IF the people commissioning them to do so ask them to. If the commissioners just design a bag with a handle as an ornament, and design a leather loop that is bound to fail if the handle is actually used to carry the bag (heaven forbid...), then the fact that the person in the Dominican Republic is paid a lot less than someone in, say, Texas, is irrelevant. If the design had been properly thought through and robust and the handle was intended to carry heavy stuff at 70 mph on a motorbike, it matters not where it was made.

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I do know that the people in the Dominican Republic are perfectly capable of manufacturing leather bags to the highest quality that will last a lifetime, IF the people commissioning them to do so ask them to. If the commissioners just design a bag with a handle as an ornament, and design a leather loop that is bound to fail if the handle is actually used to carry the bag (heaven forbid...), then the fact that the person in the Dominican Republic is paid a lot less than someone in, say, Texas, is irrelevant. If the design had been properly thought through and robust and the handle was intended to carry heavy stuff at 70 mph on a motorbike, it matters not where it was made.

 

I thought the author of that post covered this rather well, i.e., it's not the location, but the expense.

 

Design is one issue; build execution is another…one or both…may or may not apply.

 

Jeff

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I thought the author of that post covered this rather well, i.e., it's not the location, but the expense.

 

 

I am not getting into a protracted argument about whether sourcing bags from the Dominican Republic and selling them for a premium price in California is a good or bad thing or not, but the people off-shore could have made a decent life-time attachment for the carrying handle, if that's what ONA had wanted, and made it for the same (cheap) price, in labour terms.

 

It's ONA that have decided that the handle attachment will fail and it would have failed if the person making it had been paid $20 in the US or $2 in the DR.

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