You may have noticed I tend to have a lot of pictures from my trips and climbs, perhaps you may have even wondered, how did she have time to get a shot like this while climbing?
“Very carefully!” Is my usual answer, however I now have a new one, “I used The Wrist Shot!”
Golden Hour, a rather intrepid company based in San Francisco, California, sent me a Wrist Shot for review and I took it on my Tuolumne / Yosemite Trip. What is the Wrist Shot? It’s an interesting neoprene wrist bracelet of sorts that holds and protects your camera at the ready on your wrist.
I wore mine on the approach hike to Hobbit Book in Tuolumne and in fact even wore it while climbing some of the pitches. While it was nice to have during the approach, I found it most handy while at belay stations. Since I was climbing with a team of three I sometimes had downtime at a hanging belay and was glad I didn’t have to dig in my pack to pull out my camera. Instead I simply unwrapped and flipped it up for some shots.
Handy little contraption!
Facts:
Price: $30.00
Material: Neoprene
Weight: (As measured by my postage scale) 2.3 Ounces
Availability: Purchase direct from Golden Hour’s website.
Pros:
- Fast way to take pics without fear of dropping your camera.
- Works with a standard tripod socket. You can choose one of three locations on the wrap to screw your camera onto.
- Neoprene covers the camera’s front and back and offers protection. I bumped my camera on the rock once and it was fine.
- Easy to use. When you want to use it, you rip open the cover neoprene, flip up your camera and take a picture. When you’re done just wrap it up and press the velcro closed.
Cons:
- As a climber I did not wear the Wrist Shot while crack climbing for obvious reasons.
- My wrist got a little warm. Not a problem on cold days of course.
- My camera interfered once with bending my wrist – Note: I did not have it in the optimum hole for my camera since the tripod mount for my Canon Elph series camera is off center (I only realized later I could have moved it) this made the camera stick out more than it should have.
- Not easy to hand off your camera to someone else. It’s not hard to do this, but you do have to remove it from your wrist versus just handing an unattached camera to someone.
- Won’t work with my DSLR. Though, I haven’t actually tried…
Conclusion:
I think this little and reasonably priced device is a speed improvement over securing your camera with slings to yourself before taking a shot. Also, since the camera’s on your wrist you don’t have to go digging for it while hiking. I think the wrist advantage is even greater for situations where you may not even want to carry a pack, say trail running perhaps. The original purpose of the Wrist Shot was for surfers to use with waterproof cameras, definitely a situation where you don’t have spare pockets.
And now for your enjoyment, a little video shot at the top of Hobbit Book in Tuoluomne, Yosemite National Park. Filmed and Directed by Jeremy Shapiro. I’m afraid it’s a little hard to hear what I’m saying in the beginning due to wind noise. Also, note that I did not put the camera in the correct position (see my comment above about that) so it sticks out a bit more from under the wrap than it should.