Why I Bought the UPstrap

Here’s why I bought the UPstrap. Believe it or not, there’s only one valid rea­son to buy any cam­era gear. It has to solve a prob­lem for you. For­tu­nately, pho­tog­ra­phy is rife with prob­lems. If you want to buy some­thing, it’s not that hard to find a valid rea­son for it. Then you can go to sleep with con­tent that you didn’t just splurge on some­thing you wanted. Instead, you solved a problem.

My Cam­era Strap Problem

Although I bought a Black Rapid strap a few years ago, I haven’t used it in over a year. There are a few prod­ucts like it. For those who aren’t famil­iar, the Black Rapid strap is a cross-​body strap that attaches to your cam­era by the tri­pod screw mount on the bot­tom of the body, or to the foot of a large lens. Your cam­era dan­gles at your side, upside down. All you have to do is reach down and slide it up the strap into posi­tion to take a shot, and then let it go dan­gle at the bot­tom again.

It wasn’t with­out its prob­lems, though. Soon after I bought it, there was a recall on the fas­tener that attached your cam­era to the strap. It seems some failed and the cam­eras gave way to grav­ity. That’s right, they crashed to the ground from about waist height. To their credit, the good folks at Black Rapid fixed the prob­lem for free.

After using the strap for a while, I guess I just never got com­fort­able with the way my cam­era hun upside-​down. It seemed rather pre­car­i­ous to me. As it turns out, that feel­ing was right, but for rea­sons I hadn’t considered.

Scott Diussa is one of the instruc­tors of the Real World Con­cert Pho­tog­ra­pher pre-​conference course dur­ing Pho­to­shop World. In his day job, Scott works for Nikon Pro­fes­sional Ser­vices. One of the things he shared with the class dur­ing the con­cert class last fall was the dan­ger of hang­ing your cam­era upside-​down by that tri­pod threaded mount. It was never designed to sup­port the weight of the cam­era in that posi­tion, but rather to hold it up. Then Scott told us about hav­ing seen a num­ber of cam­eras dam­aged because they fell from sys­tems that held the cam­era upside-​down. Some were straps, some were hol­ster mounts that clipped to your belt. They’re all con­ve­nient until they break.

I had already given up my Black Rapid strap before I heard this, but now I was con­vinced that I’d never use it again. Of course, my solu­tion of just car­ry­ing it in my hands wasn’t all that bril­liant, either. One good bump or stum­ble and it could go tum­bling out of my hands. I’ve had a few close calls.

Scott gave the rea­son­able advice that the cam­era was meant to be car­ried by a cam­era strap. That’s why they have those lit­tle rings (or tri­an­gles, in my case) to con­nect a strap. Now my choice was to just pick the right strap.

Choos­ing the UPstrap

There is no short­age of cam­era straps on the mar­ket. My deci­sion to choose the UPstrap was sim­ply based upon obser­va­tion. The pho­tog­ra­phers that I respect were using it. It’s com­fort­able, well-​designed, strong, and it doesn’t slip off your shoul­der. I wanted to get a new strap before Scott Kelby’s World Wide Photo Walk, and Scott men­tioned it again on his blog as part of the gear he was taking.

The UPstrap seems to be avail­able only from the man­u­fac­turer, which is just a small busi­ness here in Florida. As I read more about the prod­uct, it became clear that he put thought into his design instead of just slap­ping things together. He didn’t just thing about the weight of the cam­era, but also the force applied if the cam­era bounced and was snapped against the end of the strap.

I ended up buy­ing the Large Pad cam­era strap with HD Rapid Release and Vec­tran Loop Ends. What does that mean? Well, it means I have a strap with a large, com­fort­able pad that won’t dig into my shoul­der or slip off. It’s means that I can eas­ily remove the strap from the Rapid Release clips with­out hav­ing to undo them from the cam­era strap rings. It also means it was extremely easy to install.

Here’s how sim­ple it is to install. You slip those Vec­tran loops through the cam­era strap rings on your body. Then you slip the HD Rapid Release clip through the loop. Do that on each side, and then clip in the strap with your pad. All done, very secure and comfortable.

I gave the UPstrap a test dur­ing my photo walk at Epcot this week­end and it lived up to its billing. There was no dis­com­fort at all and it stayed on my shoul­der. The pad grips well and doesn’t slide around as you move.

One of the rea­sons I wanted the HD Rapid Release Clips is because I didn’t want to have the strap hang­ing around when I use my tri­pod or store the cam­era in my bag. The clips remain, but they aren’t a prob­lem at all. I sup­pose I could eas­ily remove them if I desired, but I don’t see that as an issue right now.

Another ben­e­fit is the abil­ity to use the same strap on dif­fer­ent cam­eras. I just buy another set of the Rapid Release clips for the other cam­era and clip in the strap.

The only down­side was rather minor. When I use my cam­era ver­ti­cally, the damn strap on the top of the body falls right in front of the eye­piece. It’s not a big deal, I just have to remem­ber to hold it out of the way. That’s one dif­fer­ence between using the strap loops on the body vs. the threaded tri­pod mount on the bot­tom. Con­sid­er­ing my cam­era is more secure with this approach, I’ll deal with a minor detail like this one.

Sum­mary

That’s my first impres­sion of the UPstrap. It works as I’ve been told and I feel much bet­ter about the secu­rity of my cam­era. When I dis­cussed this issue about tripod-​mount straps on a pho­tog­ra­phy mes­sage board, one guy really dissed the entire thing. His ratio­nale was that you can’t trust a ven­dor rep.

Really? That’s his logic? What pos­si­ble rea­son would Scott Diussa or any other manufacturer’s rep have to be decep­tive about this issue? Nikon gives you a strap when you buy a cam­era, and I sus­pect that Canon and other ven­dors do the same. He wasn’t try­ing to sell any­thing, but rather to help peo­ple avoid dam­age to their expen­sive gear. For the life of me, I just can’t under­stand why any­one would dis­be­lieve a per­son for sug­gest­ing that the safest way to hold up your cam­era is by using part of the cam­era that was designed to hold its weight properly.

That said, I’m happy with the UPstrap. It’s not the cheap­est cam­era strap on the mar­ket, but it pro­vides good qual­ity and value. That’s why I bought the UPstrap.