A 5D MKII does not bounce!

The Damaged Goods

Ok, so here is the whole heart stopping story. I was shooting in Georgetown yesterday with my 5D MK II. To avoid traffic I was riding my scooter. As I got on my bike I stood up to kick start it and my camera fell to the ground and landed on the corner of the battery pack with a thud. How this happened I still am not completely sure. It somehow came unclipped from my BlackRapid strap.

I want to be very fair to BlackRapid and admit I was not using the strap as they suggest. I don’t use the fastenR (See photo). As I have posted before, what I How the BlackRapid strap fastener is suppose to look.do is thread some strong climbing rope through the camera strap slot on the bottom of the battery grip and then clip the loop to the strap’s clip and use the plastic tubed “gate sleeve” to secure it. The knot and the rope held. Nothing broke or came untied. The only thing that could have happened is that the rope came out of the clip at the end of the strap. The only way I see this happening was, that by using the climbing rope rather than the fastenR, it gave too much room in the clip. As a result the gate sleeve was able to slide around and the gate somehow opened. The camera fell about two feet onto the corner of the battery drive. The battery pack now has a real nice scar on it (see above). I quickly said a prayer and tried to turn on the camera, it was dead. It was very low on battery power so I thought it might have just been dead batteries. Once I got home I charged the batteries but still no luck. I am not blaming anyone, but myself. But I do want to make readers aware of two things. One is that I think the plastic tube used as a guard is too short to be used with rope and thus can slip below the clip’s gate. The previous straps seemed to have a longer gate sleeve and thus this style of rigging would work fine. I heard rumors that BlackRapid is working on a new gate sleeve. I am checking with them on this and will let you know. The second thing is, while I had to blog this story, I don’t want to give BlackRapid a black eye. I love all my sponsors and I still love the R strap! This was due to my “jury rig” and not using the strap properly. So let me warn you; if you rig the strap the way I did, you risk the same fate, as the gate can apparently open just enough for the rope to slip through.

I do have a suggestion for BlackRapid. There is a connection that PacSafe uses on many of their straps that would work perfectly, IMHO. It is a type of locking carabeiner and they have it somehow on a swivel connection. PacSafe uses it on many of their bag straps. This seems like a winning idea. You can see the PacSafe strap and connection in the photo below.

PacSafe Carrysafe

* By the way, my 5D is wth Canon Malaysia now being repaired. I will keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • hi there,
    i made my own version of the rstrap - using parts and materials from Mountain Equipment Co-Op. If you email me I'll show you photos of the solution that works with the R Strap or with my own version that doesn't use a rope and still allows for full use of the vertical shooting option.
  • I am posting here just to make sure all of you that commented on this know about the new ConnectR-2 that BR has release. I have been using it for over a month now and it is just what I was hoping for. A bomb proof connector that has a locking mechanism on it. Perfect. You can see it on my latest blog post HERE.
  • Larry and others,

    BR did get back with me last week. I just have not had a free moment to post their response. I also wanted to hear back from Canon. I should be posting something as soon as monday or tuesday.
  • Matt, I know the folks at BR here in Seattle. They are working on an improved design of the R fastener. I threw my fastener away immediately because it was too clunky. I use a small split ring attached to the L bracket. There is no way that the split ring can accidently get past the plastic tube sleeve. The plastic sleeve would have to fail first.

    In BR's defense, they had contracted with a company to provide a locking carabiner type attachment and the company failed to deliver so it was back to square one.
  • hi there,
    i made my own version of the rstrap - using parts and materials from Mountain Equipment Co-Op. If you email me I'll show you photos of the solution that works with the R Strap or with my own version that doesn't use a rope and still allows for full use of the vertical shooting option.
  • Patrick, The folks at BR are away till the 9th. I am waiting to hear back. But from what I have heard, they are working on a new fastening system. This seems to be the only real bug, that and how the fasteR effects shooting vertically. I really don't mine the rope method. I honestly would be more conformable if it was a cable rather than climbing rope. But if you think about it, the climbing rope is more secure and stronger than a webbed strap. My only problem is by using this method I give too much play with the gate.
  • pcb
    i feel for you. I once left a camera on the roof of my car as I drove off down the highway. they don't bounce going 55mph either. The R Strap is a good idea with terrible execution. the clip stinks, the plastic tube stinks, and the fastenR stinks. I've been using cordelette instead of the fastenR for 6 months now, and have almost killed my camera a few times... the fastenR makes the vertical grip useless. I'm about ready to throw the Rstrap away and go back to the good ole canon strap. or maybe i'll take up painting. though if you do get sick of the shapeshifter, let me know... that looks like a good one.
  • Ouch, yes, that's a bad news!
    I'm also an happy owner of a R-strap (and a 5DkII btw), so I'll be expecially carefull too!
    I think your idea is good: using a locking carabeiner (used them a lot while climbing) and maybe putting a piece of scotch to lock the opening part of the R-strap?
    We usually don't take this out often, and anyway, there's the carabeiner twisting system.
    Hope your 5D can be repaired!
    Olivier

    (sorry for my poor english...)
  • Yikes. Sorry to hear that. It does serve as a warning to me. The other day I lost the star washer part of the FastenR while wearing the strap without a camera attached. I was about to just use a little piece of rope seeing as it worked so well for you :) Think I will go spring for a new FastenR.
  • Jeffrey, I would have to agree. The concept is brilliant. But the fastenR and the clip on the strap have to be developed more. This is just growing pains. (More for some than others ;) )
  • Jeffrey Chapman
    Ouch! I love the R-Strap, but clearly the fastenR itself needs to be rethought as nobody seems to like it. It's bulky and gets in the way when turning the camera for portrait framing. I clip my R-Strap to an O-ring that I attached to my L-plate (as Nikons don't have camera strap slots on the grips).

    Obviously, the clip and/or guard need(s) to be redesigned as well. I think that I'll wrap a strip of gaffer tape around the plastic gate guard to secure it in place until a better solution comes along.

    The R-Strap is brilliant, but I think that they need to rethink these two parts. In the meantime, I'm really sorry to hear that your new baby took this plunge. I'm going to have to be particularly vigilant now to try to avoid suffering the same fate.
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