Waka Rapid Camera Neck Strap with Quick Release and Safety Tether, Adjustable Shoulder Sling Strap for Nikon Canon Sony Olympus DSLR – Black

A strap with confidence.
This camera strip is just what the doctor ordered. Made to hold a camera with a big lens, like a 70-200 with safety confidence. With the underarm additional strap, it never allows the main camera strap to come off your shoulder. Full range of using your camera vertically or horizontally with ease. I do recommend this is a purchase.

Comfortable and easy go use if you get it adjusted perfectly
This is a fairly long review, but the short answer is that this seems like a well thought out product with a few compromises for weight, balance, and length.If you are reading this, then you are looking for an alternative to the traditional camera neck strap. And, if you are looking at this specific Waka strap, then you are trying to determine if this is as good as the much more expensive straps from RapidBlack and CarrySpeed. There is little doubt that this is a copycat product based on the designs of one or both of the more name brand items, but does that mean it is not as good? Are you putting your expensive glass more at risk?I just returned from a week long birding trip where I used the strap daily for several hours at a time and my impressions are based on this intense but short-term experience with it.I carry a Nikon D7500 and a Tamron 150-600mm with this strap. Together, the camera and lens weigh about 8.5 pounds/3.86kg. Because of the lens weight, I attach the strap to the tripod foot of the lens, not the camera body. The attachment plate has a ring at one end for the strap to attach. With the strap attachment ring facing the objective end of the lens, the ring balances so that the lens and camera hang perfectly horizontal at my hip. The safety tether I attach to the shoulder strap loop of the camera body as there isn’t an appropriate point on the lens tripod foot.I am about 6 feet tall and 200 pounds.AdjustmentIdeally, I’d want the lens to sit at my side just above my belt. This position minimizes the amount of camera movement as I walk. However, if adjusted to this ideal walk position, then the strap is too short to bring the camera up to shoot above horizontal. This is mostly due to having the mount attached to the tripod foot and also having the strap attachment ring on the mount far forward. If I were to move the attachment foot to the camera body, then it would be fine at this ideal adjustment point.As it is, I had to adjust the strap to ride at my hip. It is still comfortable, but does move around more. This position is still very comfortable at the shoulder.One point to make here is that if I were to use this strap with a smaller lens, I would attach it to the camera body tripod mount. In this position I could adjust the strap so that the camera would hang above my belt. But, I won’t make this adjustment because that’s one element of this strap that I don’t like; it’s a pain to adjust the length. Once you have it where you want it, there is no burning need to change it, but don’t expect to be making easy adjustments on the fly.Under arm strapMostly no issues with the under arm strap, but one caution. Twice when putting the shoulder strap on, I accidentally looped the under arm strap around the main strap, making it about 2 inches shorter. This meant that. once buckled, I could not lift the camera high enough to take a picture. It was easy to fix once I realized what I was doing wrong. This was operator error, but because the strap had looped on the backside of the strap, I could not tell I’d made that mistake.Mounting plateNo big issues with the mounting plate, though it does flex a little when I walk. The screw seems to stay tight and I never feared it unscrewing from the tripod foot. As others have noted, it does squeak some where the strap attaches with my heavy lens and body.Safety loopI’ll admit to being dubious of the plastic slide and nylon strap of the safety loop. However, before leaving for the birding trip, I attached two five pound weights to one end and repeatedly dropped/jerked the weight. The strap held. This “test” was more weight and the drops/jerks were more violent than I’d expect in the real world.ComfortAt the shoulder, this strap is very comfortable My old sling strap, which was not padded and did not have the under arm strap, dug into my neck and became uncomfortable very quickly. With this strap I had no such issues. There were two places that were a little uncomfortable, but again bear in mind that I’m carrying a heavy lens and camera. First, the buckle of the safety tether slides up the main strap when you raise the camera. When you put the camera back down, the tether buckle can go back down as well, but in my case it does not. With the heavy camera and lens combo I have, I had to push the buckle back down the strap. If I didn’t push it back down, the sharp edges of the buckle dug into my stomach. Also, the two plastic stops that prevent the strap from sliding too far also dug into my side a bit. If you aren’t carrying a heavy combo, this should not be a problem. Note that these two stops can be easily removed. I’ve already removed one and am contemplating trying without the second as I do not believe they are essential to the strap’s use.DurabilityTime will tell on durability. After carrying my lens and camera using the strap for approximately 40 hours last week, I saw no signs of deterioration or deformation. There are a lot of plastic parts with this strap, so it remains to be seen how well it will hold up. One key element is that the main buckles are safety buckles (my term) that require you to unlock the buckle by pressing the center before you can pinch them to release.Storage pocketsA nice touch, but not that useful in practice. You could put an SD card or possibly a lens wipe in these, but don’t expect to put your lens cap (unless very small) in these pockets.Final thoughtsCompared to BlackRapid or CarrySpeed, how good is this Waka strap? I don’t know. I have not compared this directly. But, in my week of birding/hiking, I can say I’ll continue to use this strap going forward. But, I will always use the safety tether as I would not be at ease using the strap without that backup support. Will update this review if any impressions change.

Convenient Pocket
Great quality, great price, love the convenience of the pocket for extra battery or memory cards.

Liked
Nice fit easy assembly. Worth it for travel

I first bought this strap in 2020 and recently replaced it with another (2025). The fact that I bought again demonstrates how highly I rate this. It’s comfortable and adjustable with decent variation in length and does not get in the way of taking photos, often with haste. After several year the gromit that fits into the hole which is in the mount that attaches to the camera or lens, did fall out and I didn’t replace this. Not doing so causes wear on the scissor buckle which is why this eventually failed and I had to replace. The actual strap though is still perfect and I toyed with just getting a new clip. The photo below shows the gromit and clip/buckle that failed after 5 years but on the new strap, as I discarded the old before I did this review. The strap has a zipped pocket in the shoulder pad and quick release buckles on the harness. I use this with a Nikon D810 and a sigma contemporary 150-600mm so quite hefty gear, in combo with a belt hammer carrier to hook the tripod arm onto. The hammer clip helps immensely with such heavy gear but is not especially needed but I have shown this too

Well, where do I start, I read the reviews (as you do) ignore most of the 1 star, as mostly they’re whiners are have no clue what they’re buying and thought ok this seems fairly reasonably priced for something I was looking for to take the weight off my neck.I put it together, following the detailed enclosed instructions (that is sarcasm by the way) and proceeded to “climb into” the strap, best way to describe how you have to put it on, then at the same time as you’re climbing into it slip your left arm through the under arm strap.Next I attached the safety clip onto the supplied tripod mount(whatever it’s called) actually I didn’t because it looked crap and I had another better one from a handheld strap I’d bought previously.Ok that was fine camera is hanging round my front nether regions (it’s a Canon R7, with a 100-400 lens on it, with a teleconverter and hood) so climbed out of the strap, adjust length of straps, tried again.Was much better this time but….i noticed on the shoulder pad there is a flat side and a cut out side and the way I put it together the flat side was against my neck, hitch didn’t look right.So I flipped it over but that meant that the under arm strap was not seated correctly anyway I proceeded, stepped into it again felt a lot better and looked a lot better, yea the straps looked a bit twisted but as you can see from the photo’s a couple of the straps I tide a knot in them because I’m not 6’7” and 350 lbs.To be honest the straps are too big and there isn’t enough adjustment to make them fit a smaller frame.I’m 5’10” medium build and it’s too big.Last thing, the extra safety strap, I attached a quick release to it, as I already have one attached to the camera body.I’m on a trip next week visiting Minneapolis (no I’m not going there) to watch some baseball amongst other things so I may make additional comments on my return after walking round with a smaller lens on the camera and see how it is (if I remember):).TLDR it’s a 3 star for performance, 4.5 for price

I don’t have much to compare it to but it is very comfortable for carrying around a camera attached to a large lens. I’m glad I bought it.