How to fit a hand strap (without asking your girlfriend to sew it on for you)

Hand straps are great! Your camera’s always on hand (literally!) without it swinging around you neck, constantly trying to saw your head off.

Canon make the E1 which attaches to the eye on the bottom of its higher end models or its battery grips. However you can get cheap and just as effective ones from eBay that attach using the tripod mount.

They lack one vital component though – instructions! Now I appreciate it’s a simple device, and I may have been a little dim here, but the only way to thread the strap that I could see, meant it worked lose fairy quickly. After a little persuading, Helen donned thimble and stitched the strap to itself thus solving the problem, Job done.

When it came time to refit it to my new 40D, I did a little digging (whilst waiting for Helen to unpick the stitches) and came up with the image below. Step 2 made me feel particularly dumb.

I would have probably never had admitted this if it wasn’t for a friend of mine encountering the same problem and making me feel a little less stupid. I won’t name him here to spare his embarrassment but, Greg Marshall – this is for you