Field notes from day 3 of my 7 day test of Carry Speed’s CS-2B camera sling strap.

I attached the strap to the Panasonic GH1 and had it hanging from my shoulder practically all day.  Today was a research and shopping day for our move so I was walking all over home improvement stores (yes, plural), bending down to inspect things on floor-level shelves, etc.

My feet are sore, but I’m happy to report that my shoulder feels no pain or fatigue.  I don’t know if it’s because of the extra padding or just the sling form factor, but it is very easy to wear this camera strap all day long.

Unfortunately, all is not roses and moonbeams; the mount plate unfortunately does not provide enough clearance for the battery door to open when attached.  The worst part is that it just barely overlaps the battery door so that it can’t open fully.  It’s actually hard to see that the battery door is not straight until you attempt to eject the battery and it’s clear that the door is slightly slanted.  Though it would make for a better workflow to be able to perform battery changes without having to remove the plate, but I don’t expect them to be able to make a plate that works perfectly for every single camera out there.  In this case though, the plate only needs to be 1-2mm shorter on the side nearest to the battery door, so I may just pull out the dremel and make that happen.

The only other strange thing was that the rear strap slide kept popping open today for some reason.  Is it wearing out already?

Oh yeah, my favorite thing about this strap is not the strap at all, but rather the included Uni-strap accessory.  It’s a smart and quick way to add another anchor point so that the camera doesn’t slide forward when you bend down or lean over.  Initially, I worried that it might get in the way because I’d have to unclip the buckle before I could slide the camera to take a shot.  But it turns out that it’s not to hard to determine when I wouldn’t be taking a shot for a while, so I’d clip the Uni-strap to have that extra support in place.  Yes, it does add an extra step when I want to take a shot, and yes it does take a couple seconds to unbuckle it.  But it’s really not that much of an issue.  After I start shooting, I keep it unbuckled until I’m done.

The only thing I’m worried about is that the Uni-straps plastic buckle feels a bit flimsy.  I don’t know how many repeated buckling/unbuckling cycles it’ll take before it snaps.