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Make A Wrist Strap For Your Phone
31 May 2017
We use a shoulder strap when we take a walk with nothing but our camera. But when we need another lens, a notebook, a case for our glasses, some house keys, the phone and anything else, we put the camera in a bag after attaching a wrist strap to it. One way or the other, we're so used to having the camera tethered to us that it's unnerving to shoot without a strap of some kind.
Our Parts List. 1) A clamp, 2) Peak Design Cuff, 3) Carry Speed D-Ring with Peak Design Anchor Link. We could have used the 4) Carry Speed wrist strap but prefer the Peak Design Cuff.
But our phone is allergic to straps of any kind.
No shoulder strap. No wrist strap. If our grip loosens, we drop it. And the glass will shatter. You may already know what we're talking about.
The D-Ring. The critical piece to the puzzle.
The problem is that there's just no built-in way to attach a strap to a phone, of course. The things are too slim for a tripod mount and apparently eyelets are designer taboos.
AN IDEA
But sitting around in a reflective posture one afternoon, an idea came to us.
We could cobble one together. We had a wrist strap. And we had a phone clamp with a tripod mount. We just needed a D-ring on a screw.
We actually had that, too. It was attached to Carry Speed wrist strap.
But ever the tinkerer, we felt the Carry Speed strap was a bit bulky for the job. We swap a Peak Design Cuff wrist strap to whichever camera we're using so why not swap it to the phone too? We just needed another Anchor Link (and we have a few of those lying around).
ALTERNATIVES
If you're playing along at home, you could save yourself a lot of trouble by just buying a Glif:
But that will run you $28 for just the clamp or $55 for the whole set.
You can beat that even if you don't have anything lying around. Here's a typical parts list sourced at Amazon:
- Phone clamp: Fantaseal Smartphone Holder $7.99
- Screw hook: Neewer Stainless Tripod Screw with D-Ring $4.99
- Rubber washer: Generic $0.05
- Wrist strap: Shoelace $0.01
The rubber washer on the screw hook grabs without releasing when you tighten it to the clamp. Without it, the screw can work loose.
Grand total: $13.04.
BUT WAIT
After all that we were left with one little problem, though.
Wrist Strap. In action (although we prefer to hold the clamp like a handle in actual use).
When we shoot with a camera, we wrap the strap on our right wrist, hold the camera grip in our right hand and fire the shutter with our right index finger.
A phone has no grip, so you squeeze its sides. And while our phone does let us press a button on the frame to fire the shutter, it's easier to tap the big circle on the screen. You may also have to tap the screen to adjust exposure and set focus.
But you can't grip the camera and tap the screen with the same hand.
You'd laugh to see our impersonation of an ambidextrous cameraman. Using our left forefinger, we stab and miss, stab and miss.
So the awkward but more functional approach is to wear the strap on our left wrist, carrying the camera in our left hand until it's time to shoot and we use our right forefinger to do all the important work.
ON SECOND THOUGHT
What we really need, we suspect is a handle attached to the clamp with a tripod mount for the wrist strap at the end of it. Then we could hold the handle in our left hand with the strap on our left wrist and poke at the screen with our right hand.
Hmm, maybe we have one of those hanging around too.