Greetings fellow Nosillacastaways – Kirschen Seah from FreeRangeCoder.com here with a review. It’s about camera related accessories this time.
First off – let’s look at the problem to be solved. You have a nice camera, be it compact or Digital SLR, and don’t quite like the idea of hanging the camera with the included neck strap. Most of these are thin and can cause quite a bit of pressure on the back of your neck. And then there’s the extra time you need to look down for the camera, wrap your right hand around the grip, whisk it up to eye level, and take the shot. Wouldn’t it be perfect if the camera sat ready close to your hand? Well there’s an accessory for that.
I first read about the ProStrap Camera Wrist Strap on The Gadgeteer blog (the-gadgeteer.com) and decided to purchase the Deluxe Belt Strap (prostrap.com/DeluxeBelt) for my Olympus C-7070 camera. The thin nylon loop of the strap threads into the metal bracket on the camera’s body and attaches to a buckle on the leather wrist loop.
To use the strap you put the leather loop on your wrist, adjust the metal slider to cinch it as tight as you would like and voila – the camera is securely attached to your wrist. Now you can quickly swing the camera around, grab the hand grip, and take the picture! And the best part is that the camera is safely attached to a part of your body.
ProStrap also makes wrist straps in a number of different styles, so for my Nikon DSLR I opted for the Two Point Grip Strap (prostrap.com/TwoPointGrip). This particular model has a two nylon straps attached to buckles on the outside of a leather pad. One of these nylon straps goes to a metal loop on an oval piece of leather with a 1/4″ tripod screw, while the other has a loop which attaches to the metal bracket on the camera. You screw the tripod mount part onto the camera and attach the other nylon strap through the camera’s bracket, cinch the straps, and now you have a leather strap which you slip your right hand through to hold the hand grip. I usually carry the camera by supporting it with the back of my hand through the strap, and I simply tighten my hand on the camera’s hand grip and swing the camera up to my eye. Don’t worry about not being able to use the tripod mount on your camera, as the bottom part of the strap has a large knurled knob ready threaded for a tripod – how neat is that? And the large knob makes it really easy to tighten the base to the bottom of the camera.
ProStrap makes a number of different wrist straps in a variety of colours, so go check out their website, and find the one which works for you (prostrap.com). And if you really need one, they even have a neck strap as well! If you happen to have a camera which needs a split ring for an eyelet camera strap mount – they carry those too. The Deluxe Belt Strap currently retails for $14.99 while the Two Point Grip Strap sells for $19.99 all available on ProStrap’s website.
I’ve included links to the items reviewed and pictures of my setup on the Olympus and Nikon cameras. Eagle eyed folks might notice that I’m not using the bottom piece of my Two Point Grip Strap but instead have a strange looking adapter plate. This is the camera plate portion of the Peak Design Capture Camera Clip – but, hey, as they say, that’s a topic for the next time.
Well that’s all for now – it’s Kirschen Seah from FreeRangeCoder.com and I’ll see you in the bitstream!