It’s here: The all new Cinch
Cinch is the most flexible, stable, and versatile camera strap available for your SLR. Comfortable and secure yet easy to use, it lets you carry your camera off one shoulder or across your torso ready to lift to your eye at a moment’s notice. You can go from carrying your camera across your body to off one shoulder to just around your neck in seconds, adjusting Cinch’s length as you go. Whatever the current moment demands, Cinch provides.
How did we make Cinch better than ever? Simple. We rethought every component. Perhaps the most noticeable change are our all-new low-profile Cinch sliders. They’re made of an injection-molded material that might be best described as a ceramic-carbon polymer. We call it Lumidium and it’s nothing like the plastics that you’ll find on the gear at your local store. It allows us to give the sliders a super-smooth action that has to be felt to be believed.
As easy as the new Cinch sliders are to use, they hold tight when under tension which means that your Cinch will always stay the length you want it to be as you use it.
As we’ve worked on Cinch, we’ve found that there is no one single perfect way to carry every kind of camera. Smaller SLRs—such as the Canon Rebel or Panasonic GH series—with pancake lenses carry just fine using their traditional camera strap mount points. Medium size and larger cameras carry better when one or both ends of the camera strap are attached to the bottom of the camera. Since camera makers don’t tend to put camera strap mount points on the bottom of cameras, we offer three different ways to accomplish this. The one we’re most proud of is the Plate
The Plate
We went through several designs for placing two camera strap mount points on the bottom of a camera. As we iterated, we noticed that our designs looked a lot like a tripod mount plate. So we went all in and made it an Arca-Swiss compatible plate.
Made out of our new carbon-ceramic Lumidium polymer, the Plate is stronger than aluminum, won’t conduct heat from your hands in the cold, and is lightweight. To keep it from twisting, we use 3M Bumpon for the surface that goes against your camera. It’s a resilient elastomer that grips the bottom of cameras like nobody’s business.
Why Arca-Swiss compatibility? Frankly, we think that Arca-Swiss compatible clamps like those from Really Right Stuff, Kirk, Acratech, and others are the best out there. On the other hand, we know that lots of people use Manfrotto RC2 plates. That leads us to...
PodMount and Membrane Connectors
While we think our Plate is a great solution for most photographers, we know that it’s not a one-solution fits all world. Some cameras are small enough that the Plate can cover up a battery door. Other photographers already have a metal plate that’s perfect for them. For you, we have two other connection methods: PodMount and Membrane Connector.
The Membrane Connector is a single piece of laser-cut Hyplon technical material. It’s the same stuff used to make Zodiac boats. It sandwiches between your current plate—whether it’s a Manfrotto plate or a custom-shaped L-bracket from Really Right Stuff—and your camera providing an additional camera strap mount point.
Our PodMount is even simpler. It turns any tripod screw mount on the bottom of a camera or on a long lens collar into a place to attach a camera strap to. Machined out of stainless steel, it’s designed to be durable and easy to use.
Modular Adaptability
By itself or with a Plate, PodMount, or Membrane Connector, Cinch can be adapted to your needs. It’s also a concept that we’ve embedded into the way we make it. You can easily disassemble Cinch and put it back together again. Right now, this will let you flip over the shoulder pad—grippy on one side, smooth on the other—and change how the pad’s surface interacts with your clothing. In the future, it’ll let you swap out the webbing, hardware, and shoulder pads with future optional offerings.
Quick Links
We’ve scoured the world for a quick connection system that makes it easy to attach and detach a strap from your camera. It’s actually more of a challenge than you’d expect. Many quick release systems have inherit failure modes that keep us far from being comfortable offering them. We have, however, found one solution that strikes a good balance between convenience and security: Quick Links. We’ve found the best ones available and offer them as an optional accessory.
They work well with cameras that have lugs and split rings to attach camera straps to. Of course, they work perfectly with our Plate, PodMount, and Membrane Connector. For cameras with slot brackets, such as most Canon cameras, we’ll have an adapter in the near future.
Your Choice
You can find everything we offer in our online store. To make things even easier, here are the three combinations that we offer Cinch in:
If the Plate, PodMount, or Membrane Connector aren’t right for you, we also offer a Basic Cinch ($50) without the frills.