Above is the latest modification I’ve made to my D800E, with a short length of nylon pictures frame cord between the strap slot on the sling strap and the strap ring on the camera body.
It’s very much a stable-door modification after my run for the train on the way home on Saturday resulted in the camera detaching from the strap and bouncing along the platform. Fortunately the camera itself doesn’t appear damaged, as it landed on the flash unit. This broke quite neatly leaving the shoe in the camera and the body of the unit – which appears more or less undamaged skidding along the platform, from where another would-be passenger kindly returned it to me. It looks a fairly simple repair – and putting the two pieces together it still seems to work. The miniature flat cable from the shoe to the body actually looks like it was designed to unplug during this kind of event!
A colleague suggests that a little Loctite on the screw thread would be a good idea, and I don’t often want to remove the sling strap fitting (it takes a tripod screw on the rare occasions I need to use a tripod or monopod.)
I’d realised when I started using the sling strap that there was nothing to stop it coming loose, and added another to my repertoire of many nervous twitches, attempting to tighten it, but had never actually found it needed tightening. Saturday had been a fairly active day, moving around a lot when taking pictures and it had obviously worked loose, with running for the train the last straw.
The nylon picture frame cord is tough stuff – unlikely to break under the weight of camera and flash, leaving it hanging just a few inches lower if the strap becomes unscrewed again. I deliberately have left it loose both to allow the movement the sling strap needs and to avoid chafing.
I like to work with two cameras, and at the moment I have the D700 still on a normal neck strap and the D800E on a sling strap. I quite like this, as it helps me to tell which camera is which (sometimes a problem for me, particularly as the telephoto lens I use is shorter than the wide-angle) and also helps prevent the banging of the cameras into each other which can result in minor damage.
I didn’t notice any problems working with the cord in place at a protest on Wednesday, so I think its a permanent feature on the camera for me, though I’ll need to watch out for wear. So as I sat down on the bus to go home, I thought I’d mention it here and put the camera on my knees and took a picture of the modification – heavily cropped above. It was getting dark and it isn’t a high quality image, but it shows the idea clearly enough.
It also told me I had been working with the VR on the 28-105mm lens switched off. I can’t think why this should have been, probably just that I pushed the switch by accident when changing lenses. I don’t think I ever need to switch it off, and it has quite a heavy detent. I hadn’t noticed the images were any less sharp than usual.
