Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Thanks Phil that could work very well

After reading this thread, I was so tempted to plop down nearly $100 for one the shoulder harnesses as I can see the convenience and comfort of this over a neckstrap is pretty great.

Just before I was pressing the buy button in agony, I remembered that I bought a few replacement straps and accessories from dealextreme before. One thought lead to another and I had an inkling that I have all the stuff I need to make one of these straps myself!

The process turned out to be pretty simple, here's a brief pictorial summary of what I did:

I started with a cheap wrist holding strap that I got from DX (never used it cuz it sorta... sucks? lol).
Couldn't find the exact product now, but they're all similar:
e.g.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.27853



I took off the wrist pad as I only needed the strap that connects the tripod mount with the strap holes on my camera.

Here's a pic of it attached:



Now that I have a very secure and tight loop that we can slide a strap under, I rummaged through my old laptop bags and found the most heavy duty strap with some shoulder padding:



I didn't like the easy clip/unclipping, it seemed easily detachable by a 3rd person. However, I figured if I double clip it like this to complete the loop, it wouldn't be as easy to detach, so I went with it:



So now combining the two straps is just a matter of threading through:



As soon as I wore it, it felt pretty right and I was able to achieve the 'quickdraw' effect of those other straps. (Sorry this pic is the best action shot I could do on my phone):



After tinkering a bit, I improved "my" design by tightly clamping the laptop strap between the tripod mount and the camera:



A benefit of this is that it prevents the strap from twisting within the loop as the camera is being tossed around your hips. Also, this takes the weight off of the loop and should the clamped strap slip out, then you'd have the loop as a backup. A third benefit (at least in my case) is that now I can control the placement of the laptop strap's clips easily because the strap won't be doing any moving. This allows me to position the clips right in front of me making it much less errr... tempting for someone else to unclip without me noticing. Whoa, I just scored a hat trick.

.....so yea, I just saved myself a buncha money! Can't wait to go test this out!

=)

Great writeup!

One thing to add, is that with the commercial solutions, the part that connects to the tripod socket is infinitely smaller, and would probably work better on tripod collars. But otherwise, this is a great DIY for a tenth of the price!

Great idea I just happen to have a next to usless hand strap I can sacrifice that is if it is strong enough to take the extra load.