Product Review: Peak Design Capture Camera Clip

The Peak Design Capture Camera Clip is a device that was designed as a type of quick draw holster to hold a camera on a belt clip or bag strap, for easy access. Peak design has been super hyped up in the photography industry as a company with incredibly design centric methodology, that designs super unique and highly functional products. I have to say that after purchasing my first Peak Design device, I’m incredibly disappointed. This device is a Great concept (that’s already been achieved by competitors, mind you), but designed extremely poorly.

Here we go!

I was really excited to try this clip after reading so many great reviews. It’s a great concept, but the design is very poor and here’s 5 reasons why you shouldn’t waste your money on this.

The plate that you must screw into the base of your camera (or battery grip) that comes with this clip, is conveniently too small to fit most tripods. In order to get a bigger, standard sized plate that will fit into a tripod ball head (or other type of tripod heads), you have to pay them even more for a better model or buy an “adapter.” Just what I need in my life, more adapters. I feel cheated. So when you’re in the field, and doing any work that needs a tripod, you’re going to have to swap off this plate on the base of the camera and put your other base plate on for your tripod head. Which leads me to bullet point number 2…

You also need to carry around an allen key (comes with), in order to screw your base plate onto your camera, as mentioned above. I figured that this company would have taken a look at some tripod manufactures to design a better plate that you could quickly and easily attach and remove without an easy to lose tool—they exist already. This company is supposed to be super innovative, so why on earth did they design something that needs an allen key? And speaking of easy to lose things… here’s bullet point number 3…

This clip has an awful lot of parts you have to finagle with in order to attach it to a belt or strap. As seen in the photos I’m attaching, there are several threaded screw type pieces and if you’re an outdoorsman or super active photographer, they’re just more pieces to easily lose when switching the location of this clip—If you’re a normal human being and switch pants a lot, taking this off and putting it back on your belt over and over becomes annoying—you must finagle with two main screws to get the placement just right.

The push to release lock is nice, but it’s positioned in such a way that it requires two hands to safely remove the camera from the clip without fear of dropping your camera. I was hopeful that this company would have designed a quicker way for people to quickly release the camera, that would only require one hand—another shortcoming on the design side of things.

My biggest gripe with this is the way they show the photos in all the examples of seemingly weightless DSLRS with lenses sitting comfortably on a persons hip or on a bag strap. Here’s how physics really work: Due to the vertical orientation of placement of this clip on a person’s hip, the weight of any camera bigger than a point and shoot is going to push the bottom of the clip right into your hip. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. I have a mirrorless camera with a kit lens and after wearing it for a few hours while walking, it left a bruise on the side of my leg from the hard plastic pushing in, due to our old friend gravity. When you walk, the camera will bounce, and thus pushing the clip into you even harder… over and over and over. The bigger the lens, the more annoyed you will be!

Also, while it sits on a bag strap in front of your chest, unlike the wonderful photos they show you on the package, your lens will not sit in a perfect vertical orientation and be comfortable. As you walk it bounces all around no matter how tightly you secure it. As I show in my photos, you can see the clip pushing into my hip and how awkward it is on the front of my bag. I have a kit lens on a mirrorless camera and it’s a bit nuisance—even though it says it’s fine for DSLRs.

The proper design for this would have been to allow the camera body to sit flush again a person’s leg (or chest strap) and have the lens sit horizontally to avoid the clip pushing into legs or your chest (if you’re wearing in on a backpack strap, of course).

After trying this thing out for a couple of days, I’m just really frustrated as how it’s marketed, as opposed to how it really works. It’s got a ton of moving pieces which is an unnecessary design.

It sits awkwardly and uncomfortably with any moderately sized camera. If you look at the sample photos, they’re clearly all set up in a way that falsely portrays how cameras will really sit within this clip when it’s actually in use. Lenses will not sit perfectly straight in a vertical fashion. Also, don’t even think of putting anything larger than a kit lens on your camera with this clip.