UPDATE 09.18.2014
After yesterdays post about my admiration for the the products from Peak Design. We were inundated with links and articles that originated from Reddit about the Slide camera strap and Clutch hand strap failing when in use. I purchased both products from their booth at Photokina on Monday and I decided to go back today to ask Peak Design directly what the issues are and how confident should be in the products.
I spoke directly with the founder of Peak Design, Peter Dering. I requested a demonstration of what had been failing on the products and asked what Peak Design was doing about the issues. I also wanted to know if what I purchased at Photokina was affected by the issues, to which I was glad to hear they aren't.
Peter explained that the issue arose because of quality control issues from the manufacturing side of things. A small percentage of springs that hold the anchor links in place were not built to the specifications Peak Design wanted. Peter did say that their manufacturing partner has been very responsive to the issues and they are working diligently at improving QC immediately on the spring mechanism.
I asked if the poster from Reddit that had his equipment damaged was going to be taken care of, and I was told they would be.
You can view Peak Design's acknowledgement of the product on their Kickstarter page for the Clutch and Slide. There should be a video posted there shortly showing the issue and how to see if your Slide or Clutch is affected by the issue. Anything sold and shipped at Photokina and in the future is completely free of the spring issue.
Peak Design is giving 10% off to any order of $19.95 or more to Canon Rumors readers. I am making no money on this and after the explanation and demonstration from Peter, I have complete confidence in the product.
Save 10% at Peak Design, click here, if the link doesn't automatically remove the 10%, please use the coupon code “cr10”.
Original Post
I'll post a few of these over the next couple of days as I find vendors of products I actually love and use. First up is Peak Design, who manufactures some of the most useful and well design camera strap on the market. Their designs are simplistic and usable, I have found other manufacturers tend to make something as simple as a camera strap, extremely complex to use.
I first heard of Peak Design about a month ago when I was looking for a long, comfortable, quick release camera strap for my Sony A7S. I'm a tall person and I like the camera to hang down just below my waste level to the side. It became apparent that people were really in love with the Peak Design Leash. I ordered it and it turned out to be the perfect camera strap for the application I was looking for. The Leash is probably best on cameras like the 60D and smaller. I wouldn't use this type of strap with the EOS-1D X or a battery gripped metal DSLR. It's probably too thin of a strap to be comfortable. They have a solution for those cameras though…
While I was at the Peak Design booth, I was given a demo of their new Peak Design Slide camera strap for larger DSLRs. It's a very thin, yet well padded strap. It's best feature is a very nifty quick adjust handle on the strap to quickly shorten and lengthen the strap as needed. I ended up buying one.
The second product I bought yesterday was the Peak Design Clutch hand strap. This is another quick release and quick adjust product. For anyone that has used the Canon hand strap, you know that is anything but quick and easy to use. The one caveat for this product is the need of a camera plate in the tripod hole. Peak design does sell an Arca compatible universal plate, but they do not sell L brackets. There are probably L brackets out there that the strap could mount to, but you'll have to find a bracket with a hole that you can feed the mounting hardware to. It might be worth it to the various bracket makers out there to be “Peak Compatible”.
All-in-all, their products are wonderfully designed and executed and I highly recommend their straps.
Peak Design Leash | Peak Design Slide | Peak Design Clutch
*I paid full price for my Peak Design products, there were no freebies given to me. :)
**You can also play “Find Fro” in the image associated with this post.
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