Are housing hand straps useful?

Hi everyone,

Before I spend more money for a possible not useful item, I would like to hear if anyone uses a hand strap for the housing. Below is a link for what will be for my housing. What will be useful for me is if holds the camera on my hand better while I fiddle between the focus button and the trigger button. I do not use the half press shutter button to focus so I have the thumb and index fingers occupied with buttons and unable to support the camera. Most often I need to other hand to support the housing. Also, I do not have big hands (XS gloves)  Thank you!

https://www.backscatter.com/Isotta-Hand-Strap-for-Mirrorless-SLR-Housings

A couple of questions, presumably you have handles on your housing?  Are you saying can't support the housing by holding the handle with your 3 other fingers and also reach the shutter and back button focus levers?

Also is the housing near neutral - i.e do you use floats to get in near to neutral, that should make it easier to hang onto - less eight means you need less strength to hold it in position.

Isotta also have standard and small handles - do you know which you have?  You could ask about the small handle to see if it would get your hand closer to better reach the triggers.

Hi Silvana

Just to add to Chris' reply:

I have handles on both sides of my Subal housing. The right hand handle (see pic) has a strap as part of it. I find this makes changing the right hand controls (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, shutter fire - plus a couple of others) really easy as you can extend your fingers forward whilst feeling the grip holding the housing fairly securely to your hand. At a pinch it pretty much allows one-hand holding and control of the housing.

3 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

A couple of questions, presumably you have handles on your housing?  Are you saying can't support the housing by holding the handle with your 3 other fingers and also reach the shutter and back button focus levers?

Also is the housing near neutral - i.e do you use floats to get in near to neutral, that should make it easier to hang onto - less weight means you need less strength to hold it in position.

Isotta also have standard and small handles - do you know which you have?  You could ask about the small handle to see if it would get your hand closer to better reach the triggers.

5 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

A couple of questions, presumably you have handles on your housing?  Are you saying can't support the housing by holding the handle with your 3 other fingers and also reach the shutter and back button focus levers?

Also is the housing near neutral - i.e do you use floats to get in near to neutral, that should make it easier to hang onto - less eight means you need less strength to hold it in position.

Isotta also have standard and small handles - do you know which you have?  You could ask about the small handle to see if it would get your hand closer to better reach the triggers.

Good questions indeed Chris. Yes the housing has handles and I can't support it enough with only 3 fingers while I reach the focus and shutter buttons with the other two fingers. I can reach those buttons just fine otherwise.  I do have floater arms on the long section and added float foam on the short ones - the camera is slightly negative. It is easy to move it around in the water, just not stable enough with 3 fingers hold.

I have standard handle and I see now that Isotta offers small handles. Not sure that will help me though, as it is not an issue of reaching, I think...I see that a handle is 189 eurous, ouch.

Thanks! 

4 hours ago, TimG said:

Hi Silvana

Just to add to Chris' reply:

I have handles on both sides of my Subal housing. The right hand handle (see pic) has a strap as part of it. I find this makes changing the right hand controls (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, shutter fire - plus a couple of others) really easy as you can extend your fingers forward whilst feeling the grip holding the housing fairly securely to your hand. At a pinch it pretty much allows one-hand holding and control of the housing.

 

 

Excellent Tim, this is what I was hoping to hear! Thanks!

4 hours ago, Silvana said:

Excellent Tim, this is what I was hoping to hear! Thanks!

My pleasure.

If you want to handle the housing with only one hand, the strap is a big help. 

When using 2 hands, the 3 finger is more than enough.

If your hands are to big to the handle / buttons position or to small, the handle strap might represent a more difficult usage of the housing. But I would say that this more true in extreme situations (hands quite small or too big)

Do not forget that you also need to have the right hand in some how free to be able to manage the right strobe.

I would say that to have it won’t do you harm (besides the budget). 

4 hours ago, pbalves said:

If you want to handle the housing with only one hand, the strap is a big help. 

When using 2 hands, the 3 finger is more than enough.

If your hands are to big to the handle / buttons position or to small, the handle strap might represent a more difficult usage of the housing. But I would say that this more true in extreme situations (hands quite small or too big)

Do not forget that you also need to have the right hand in some how free to be able to manage the right strobe.

I would say that to have it won’t do you harm (besides the budget). 

Thanks for the thoughts and good point about wanting to still free the arm to adjust the right strobe. Perhaps for wide angle shots I can keep the strap more lose, but where I dive (South California) is dark and murky, so I do a lot of macro photography with single strobe.

I do not use a hand strap for my housing but I have a clip that I hook onto my BCD in case I accidentally drop my camera in the ocean.

On 11/10/2021 at 6:37 PM, Silvana said:

but where I dive (South California) is dark and murky, so I do a lot of macro photography with single strobe.

 I find with a one strobe set-up, the strobe is better on the left hand side. The left hand is "usually' more free to make strobe adjustments; whilst the right hand (supported by the handle strap, can fire the shutter, adjust shutter speed/aperture/ISO and myriad of outer fun controls. I find this certainly to be the case when using a snoot.

I was thinking it might depend on whether you are left or right handed. But having written the above, it doesn't seem to make much difference. Most active controls seem to fall to the right hand.

3 hours ago, TimG said:

 I find with a one strobe set-up, the strobe is better on the left hand side. 

Maybe its not just an equipment convenience.

This may be an urban myth - the story I heard is that the old masters (artists), having to paint by daylight, would sit with the light coming over their left shoulder so their right hand (with the brush) did not shadow the painting. This had a knock-on effect for the light on the subject.

We have been conditioned to appreciate that style of lighting. Everything since has been inherited from that.

Even with a dual strobe setup, sometimes it is nice to dial the right down a bit or the left up a bit to create a little bit of direction to the light.

Great story, John!

It does have the air of reality about it...... and is along the lines of Rembrandt portrait lighting.