Cotton Carrier Camera Shoulder Strap Review – A Match For Their Harnesses?

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Cotton Carrier is best known for its camera harnesses designed for long walks with an easy and silently accessible camera. I enjoy those products, but they serve a particular niche, and when you aren’t out for a hike with your gear, you need to get your camera back onto a regular shoulder strap. Now, Cotton Carrier has launched a regular camera strap, which it says has been built to the same standards as its harness systems. What features does the strap bring to the table in a crowded market? Does it work in a complementary way with the Skout G2 and G3 harnesses? In this review, we’ll find out.

Disclaimer: Cotton Carrier provided the camera strap for this review. No money changed hands, and they did not see the review before it was published. I may make a small commission if you purchase a harness from one of the links on this page.

Specifications

  • Color: Black
  • Strap Width: 2″ / 5.1 cm
  • Strap Length: 34 to 62″ / 86.4 to 157.5 cm
  • Materials: Nylon, neoprene
  • Price: $49 at review time. Check the current price.

Design and Features

cotton carrier camera strap

Neoprene Shoulder Pad

The strap has a removable neoprene shoulder or neck pad. Clearly, it’s more comfortable to use the shoulder pad when you’re carrying a heavier camera setup. Still, removing the padding is a welcome option if you only have a lightweight system or want to travel light with a strap that can roll up more readily into a camera bag pocket.

Neoprene Suspension

Beneath the yellow branding tag, a strip of stretchy shock-absorbing neoprene.

One of the benefits of a neoprene camera strap is the built-in shock absorption from the stretchy material. The downside is that they are bulky and cannot be easily folded up. To solve this, Cotton Carrier has devised a clever design for this shoulder strap that incorporates small neoprene sections into the strap for shock absorption. As you walk around, the camera’s weight stretches the neoprene ever so slightly with each step instead of constantly imparting a shock onto your neck or shoulder. It’s a slight but noticeable comfort improvement over any standard nylon strap.

Quick-Release System

The Cotton Carrier camera strap comes with a pair of plastic quick-release buckles they are calling variously Camera Anchors or Anchor Loops. These loops attach to your camera, and the buckles allow you to disconnect the shoulder strap.

Removing a camera strap can be helpful when you want to work from a tripod without a dangling strap getting in the way or when you want to quickly move the strap from one camera to another. Additional pairs of Anchors can be purchased for $12, making moving the strap from one camera to another much cheaper than buying multiple straps.

Some may not appreciate the size of the quick-release buckles.

The downside of Cotton Carrier’s quick-detach method is that big buckles dangle on the sides of your camera when the shoulder strap is removed. Flappy bits, dangly bits, or whatever you call them, are annoying, particularly if you’re the kind of person–like me–who only uses a shoulder strap once in a blue moon but still likes to be able to attach and detach it quickly.

No, Peak Design’s strap anchors aren’t much better–though they are much smaller–but there are other solutions, like the previously reviewed Qimera strap with its clever anchor-less Dynema quick-detach system. Ultimately, you know yourself and your shooting habits better than I do. This won’t bug you if you hardly ever detach the shoulder strap or only detach it to use it on another camera.

Camera Harness Compatibility

Cotton Carrier’s popular Skout G2 and G3 camera harnesses feature a quick-release safety tether for redundancy. These safety tethers use the same quick-release buckles as the Cotton Carrier camera strap. Used as a pair, they allow you to attach your camera to the shoulder strap for regular day-to-day use, then unclip it and attach it to the tether when you want to hike using the quick-access camera harness. I like it when multiple products can work together to make life easier. However, the harness safety tether only uses one of the two dangling buckles, leaving the other flapping against your camera while you walk.

Is It a Sling Strap?

Cotton Carrier calls this a “sling-style” camera strap, but this is confusing terminology for a standard camera neck strap with a quick-release system and some comfy neoprene. Ron Henry, founder of Blackrapid camera straps, invented camera sling straps. His sling straps were different from regular camera straps that attached to the sides of a camera in two places. The original Blackrapid sling straps had a single attachment point on the camera’s base.

Although the original Blackrapid design has been copied many times, in common photography vernacular, a sling strap continues to describe a camera strap with a single point of attachment on the base of the camera. A camera on a sling strap hangs upside down, keeping the lens out of the way, which is often beneficial for people using longer focal lengths and moving through a crowd.

The Cotton Carrier camera strap is a regular camera neck strap. It is not a sling strap and does not come with an adapter to use as a single-point sling, as the Peak Design straps do. I raised this naming convention point with Cotton Carrier when they first launched the strap, and I was told that they call it a sling because you can wear it on one shoulder. This is a confusing stance for customers, as this is not the generally accepted definition of a sling strap, and it may lead to someone accidentally purchasing the strap, looking for the distinct benefits of an actual sling strap.

To be clear, I’m not saying the strap is any worse than a sling simply because it isn’t a sling. Two-point attached shoulder straps, like this one, and single-point attached slings have pros and cons. You should choose the style with the pros that suit your needs. My point is that they are different camera strap styles, and it isn’t helpful to mislabel them.

Conclusion

The Cotton Carrier camera neck strap uses neoprene shock absorbers built into the strap and a removable neoprene neck or shoulder pad to deliver camera-carrying comfort that vastly exceeds the standard camera strap that comes with your camera. Both these neoprene additions to the design also contribute to this strap’s comfort while carrying the larger camera and lens combinations popular among wildlife photographers.

While some strap manufacturers have concentrated on smaller straps for smaller cameras–arguably the most significant market—Cotton Carrier decided to cater to its existing user base, which includes nature and wildlife photographers who usually carry heavier gear. This strap is a success from that perspective. It’s very comfortable, and I would happily use it if I never wanted to remove it from my camera.

Where this strap may fall short for some people is the quick-release system. Plastic buckles left hanging from the camera when the strap is detached seem outdated as a camera strap quick-release method. Those who often detach their camera strap and spend extended periods using it without one may find the dangling buckles annoying.

Likewise, Cotton Carrier camera harness users may find this setup less than ideal. While one of the camera strap quick-release buckles will connect to the G2 or G3 safety tether, the second is left to flap around while you walk. You can remove it for the day, but that does somewhat defeat the point of having a camera strap with a quick-release component.

Where to Buy + Save 10%

Cotton Carrier has offered Shutter Muse readers a 10% discount on anything purchased in their online store. Simply use the discount code SHUTTERMUSE after clicking here to access the store.

As always, using my links for your purchases is appreciated. Of course, the best way to buy the Cotton Carrier Camera Strap is to buy directly and use our discount code above to save yourself 10%. However, if you can’t buy directly, I’m including a few other options below.

Photo of author
Professional photographer based in Yukon, Canada, and founder of Shutter Muse. His editorial work has been featured in publications all over the world, and his commercial clients include brands such as Nike, Apple, Adobe and Red Bull.

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