Today we are looking at the Peak Design Slide Lite camera strap and how it performs on the Sony A7 III full frame mirrorless camera.
Peak Design Slide Lite Video Transcript
Hey guys, how’s it going? It’s Robb Sutton and as I mentioned in my top 10 accessories for the A7 III video, I was going to be doing a review on this Slide Light from Peak Design. So here is that review. Why don’t we get started…
My Rookie Photography Mistake
Before we get started on that…I just wanted to kind of tell him myself here just a little bit because we all take beginner mistakes. I actually started making this video yesterday and actually came to this exact same spot and then realized I didn’t have any in my batteries charged. So you know what, sometimes things just don’t work out the way they’re supposed to. But here we are again this morning. I’m actually here a little bit earlier so it’s a good thing. The lighting’s a little bit better so I thought I’d go ahead and shoot this b roll of me actually using the strap in practice. I hadn’t shot the truck in a while so I thought I’d bring it out to this location and start getting some pictures of it. As you noticed, the sun is actually a little bit bright today.
Even for this early, it was hazy. I thought I was going to get some really good light, but apparently I’m not. So what we’re going to do here is actually used a couple of tricks that when you’re shooting dark vehicles you can use. One is placing the vehicle actually in the shade, so you kind of fake good light in that area or like in this instance I’ve actually got a back light it so we can get as much of the reflections on the back of the truck versus the front so that we can, you know, do some of that work in photoshop after the fact if we have to, but it minimizes that effect and we knew some bring out the shadows. So let’s clip it in the slide light and get started.
Stock Sony Strap
Alright, so camera straps, at least for me, can be an annoying accessory. You get this one that comes with your camera. Every single one of them gets it. Whether it’d be a Nikon, Canon, or Sony…it’s your big advertisement you’re supposed to wear over your shoulder or around your neck, telling everyone exactly which camera you’re using and why. However, they’re really annoying to take on and off. There is no quick disconnect. You’ve got to unthread this strap every single time you use it. It’s normally really thin and cheap and on top of that, I don’t want to be a walking billboard of what I’ve got hanging around my neck. As you could see by the fact that this one’s still basically folded up. As soon as I open up my camera box, this is either stays in it or it gets brought out for a video so I can just throw it back in the box later.
Black Rapid Sport Camera Strap
So for the past several years when I was using my Canon equipment, it got to be really heavy with the 5D Mark III in the 70 to 200mm/f2.8. So being able to use a strap that actually crossed my body, took the weight off my shoulders and it made it a lot easier to carry. So for the past couple of years I’ve been using this Black Rapid strap that is made to go cross your body and then connects with the tripod mount on the bottom of the camera body. So that connection makes the camera really crossed down really easily, especially with longer lenses. There’s several issues with this though that eventually made me want to go to something else. One, the look of this strap really makes it look like you’re trying to be a professional photographer everywhere you go. It doesn’t matter if you’re taking video and photographs of your kid playing baseball at six years old or you’re just doing family vacation pictures, or if you’re actually doing a professional shoot out on location, it looks like you are a wannabe pro photographer all the time.
So while it doesn’t have logos all over it, like the included strap in the box, it’s still very much advertised as, hey, look at me. I’ve still got an expensive camera equipment on me. Not to mention, it looks just kind of Gaudy and pretentious in situations where you’re really not trying to be a professional and you’re really just trying to get candid shots. So if your into street photography, it’s another thing that just causes a lot of attention to you in cases when you really don’t want that much attention, you’re trying to get shots of candidate situations where people aren’t watching. I went on the hunt for us camera strap that was more versatile. I needed something that still could be slung over my shoulder because especially with longer lenses, that’s a lot more comfortable, but it needed to be able to do single shoulder as well.
It also had to work around the neck for video. That was another thing with the Black Rapid that was not easy to do when stabilizing for video because of the way it’s designed was difficult.
Peak Design Slide Lite Review
So where did I end up? The Peak Design Slide Lite. As you can see from the back of the box, they do advertise this strap for multi-use. Alright, so in the box you get the strap, you get a tripod mount and you get several other of these little red tabs that actually go into their locking mechanism to make for quick disconnects on the camera body. I went ahead and went with this gray color. I tend to wear really neutral colors anyway so it makes it so it blends into my clothing a little bit more and just a little bit more inconspicuous when you’re out walking around taking shots. So as I mentioned, they do connect on these black spring loaded connectors and then you had these adjustment buckles that slide very easily up and down and are easy to do, quick changes with while you’re wearing the strap over.
The material really kind of feels like a seatbelt material, just a little bit thicker. It’s really durable. I’ve run this up against things several times. It doesn’t seem to want to like terror scratch or anything like that. The seams all seem to be really high quality and I don’t ever get any kind of slippage or anything when you have it adjusted to a length. On the top here, you do get some kind of the rubberized rippers. Personally, my opinion is I wish I didn’t have these on there. I don’t find that they actually provide really a lot of grip or when you’re doing just single shoulder holding and when I go to switch to over the chest or if I want to use it to stabilize for video…sometimes they get in the way so when you know when you’re wearing it over your shoulder, you need to be able to swing back and forth and let it slide on your shoulder really easily.
It’s same as when you get on the back of your neck and you’re stabilizing for video and if you accidentally get it caught on that gripping side, it can kind of call it a little bit of issue, so I don’t quite see the benefit enough. When you have a multipurpose strap like this, do have those grips on there? I’d rather probably see them taken off, but that really out of everything about this camera strap is probably my only complaint. Everything else has been great. It works great over the shoulder. It works great over one shoulder and it also works great for stabilizing video around your neck and for me and my style taste, it really does blend into clothing a lot better and it compacts down a lot better than the Black Rapid Strap did because of how big that padding was. It really took up a lot of room in the camera, back.
A case of the Sony Cameras…in the Nikon cameras, you typically get these little metal clips that you’re supposed to put your camera strap through that are on either side of the camera. Body one. These can be really annoying for video because of the camera shaking it all…they can actually create clicking noises, so I like to take these off anyway and actually take these and throw them through the islets that were meant for those, so it’s just one less thing to click around on the body, but that does bring up one point that is a little bit annoying about the strap. You have to leave those on the camera to be able to use the strap and sometimes they can get in the way of your hand if you’re trying to quickly grab the camera when the strap is not on the camera body, so when you’re using a tripod or you’re just carrying around freely, that is one thing that’s hanging out on the camera that kind of waves around and can get in the way.
Overall, it’s really kind of just a little annoyance that you put up with to have the ability to quick this to strap on and off…so that’s the trade off. Yeah, it’s better than having to do like what you do is stock camera straps or some other straps that you actually have to rethread those things every time it makes it so you don’t use a camera strap as much or you leave it on in situations where you would really would rather have it off. So in the case of the Sony A7 III, I found that I use the camera strap, primarily attached those sides. I do leave this tripod mount in my bag, so when I’m using the 70-200mm I can use this and it actually is a little bit easier to use, but I’d like to switch back from the tripod to using the strap handheld back and forth more often than not, so this one really doesn’t get used all that much and I find it still works very well with using the side hooks on the A7 III on the case of like the Canon and some other bigger setups.
I probably would run the tripod now just a little bit more because those setups are a lot bigger and heavier and it makes it so it swings down to your side just a little bit better, so the Slide Lite from Peak Design definitely is a camera strap that I would highly recommend, especially for shooters that need some more versatility and have that camera strap on different parts of your body and for different purposes like stabilizing video or just taking photography shots, especially if you’re going from tripod to strap and back and forth at the price point is really good too. There are definitely some more expensive options out there and some cheaper ones, but the amount of use you get out of this, and I actually find myself using a camera strap a lot more often now because of how, first of all is so guys, there you have it.
That is the review on the Peak Design Slide Lite. If you have bigger DSLR setups like a 1Dx Mark III or you know, Nikon, D850, I probably would not go with the light version. I would go with the standard slide, but for those of us with mirrorless setups where our cameras are a little bit lighter but instilled the have big lenses attached to them, the Slide Lite works out perfectly and it’s great at this price point, so I definitely would recommend it to any shooters. If you guys have any experience, have any questions, hit up the comments section below and I’ll do my best to respond to all of them and until then onto the next review. Thank you guys for watching. See you later.