You set the strap up at the trailhead and it felt right. Then the pack went on over the top of it, the camera climbed from your hip to your ribs, the webbing dropped into the groove above your collarbone, and the sternum strap buckled across the whole arrangement and locked it there. By the first rise you are walking with one shoulder hitched up and a hand on the camera.
Almost nothing written about a camera carrier for hiking deals with this, because almost everything is written as though the camera is the only thing you are wearing. It is not. The pack arrived first, it has a fitting procedure of its own, and the camera has to be fitted into that procedure instead of being hung on top of the finished result.
So this is the geometry, in the order you would actually do it.
A loaded pack is fitted in a sequence, and the camera has a place in it
Pack makers are specific about this and most of us ignore it. Big Agnes publishes the order in its pack fitting guide: load the pack first, then the hip belt, then the shoulder straps, then the load lifters, then the hip belt stabilizers, and the sternum strap last of all. The target it gives for a properly set hip belt is that about 80 percent of the pack weight ends up resting on your hips rather than your shoulders, with the belt sitting on the hip bone and the iliac crest, not around your waist.
Read that list again with a camera in mind and the answer falls out. There is exactly one point in the sequence where a camera strap can be added without undoing anything: before the shoulder straps go on, which in practice means before the pack does.
Put the strap on after the pack is set and you are now adjusting a fitted system from the outside. Every later correction, and there are always later corrections, means lifting the camera out of the way first.
One shoulder is already spoken for
A pack has two shoulder straps, so in theory both shoulders are taken. In practice they are not taken equally.
The pack's load sits behind you and pulls backwards and down. A crossbody camera strap runs forwards and across, from one shoulder to the opposite hip. Those two lines cross each other on your chest at something close to a right angle, which is why the two get tangled at the sternum strap rather than anywhere else. They are fighting for one specific inch of fabric, not for the whole shoulder.
The useful consequence: the camera strap wants to sit as far outboard on the shoulder as it can get, close to the point of the shoulder, while the pack strap sits inboard against the neck. Stack them the other way round, with the camera pad crowded in against your neck, and the pad gets pushed up into the side of your throat every time you lean into a climb.
Which shoulder? Put the camera on the side of your dominant hand, so the camera hangs at the opposite hip and your shooting hand crosses your body to reach it. That is also the hand that is free for a trekking pole on the other side.
Over the pack strap, under it, or threaded
Three physical arrangements, and they behave differently enough that it is worth being deliberate.
On top of the pack webbing
The camera strap lies on the outside of everything. Nothing holds it in place except friction against a nylon surface that is itself moving, so it migrates. Uphill it creeps toward your neck. Downhill it slides outboard and the camera starts to swing wider. It is also the arrangement that makes the pack unadjustable, because the pack's buckles are now underneath a loaded camera strap.
It has one real use: you are stopping in ten minutes and you want the camera off quickly.
Underneath the pack's shoulder strap
Camera strap on first, across the body, pack on over it. The pack's own strap becomes a clamp that holds the camera strap in one position for the whole walk, which solves the migration completely. It is the arrangement most people end up with and it is the right default.
It costs you two things. The pack is no longer adjustable without taking the camera off, and the camera is no longer removable without taking the pack off. Both of those are fine if you set the length before you start walking and wrong if you did not.
Threaded under the sternum strap only
A middle option almost nobody tries. Run the camera strap on top of the pack's shoulder strap, but pass it underneath the sternum strap before you buckle that. The sternum strap pins the camera webbing at the one point where it would otherwise wander, and the pack's shoulder buckles stay reachable.
It is fiddly to set up and it only works if your sternum strap has enough slack to clear a second layer of webbing. When it works it is the best of the three, because you can retighten the pack at mile four without unloading the camera.
What a camera carrier for hiking needs that a town strap does not
Length, first and by a distance. This is the failure we hear about most and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.
A crossbody strap is a closed loop around your torso. Add a pack and that loop now has to go around the pack's shoulder strap as well, over a layer of padding half an inch thick or more, and it has to clear a jacket and whatever insulation is under it. Every one of those pushes the loop outward. A strap that puts the camera at your hip in a t-shirt will put it at your floating ribs over a loaded pack and a shell. Our guide to measuring your own strap length with a piece of string is worth doing with the pack actually on your back, which is not how anybody does it the first time.
Second, a pad that tolerates being stacked. Two layers of padding on one shoulder is a thicker, less stable column than one, and a pad that is stiff or heavily contoured will not sit flat on top of pack webbing. Wide and flat beats thick and shaped once something else is underneath it.
Third, hardware you can reach with the pack on. A screw mount at the tripod socket is reachable with the camera in your hands. A buckle up near the shoulder, under a pack strap, is not.
Fourth, swing control, because the trail supplies impacts the pavement does not. We covered what actually stops the pendulum in stopping a camera swinging into things when you walk, and the one thing worth repeating here is that a pack changes the answer: it raises the strap's crossing point on your chest, which lengthens the swing below it.
The hip belt is where the real conflict is
Everyone worries about shoulders. The argument you will actually lose is at your waist.
Crossbody carry puts the camera at the hip. A properly fitted pack puts a padded belt on the hip bone, under tension, carrying most of the load, with stabilizer straps either side of it. The camera has nowhere to go except on top of the belt, where it rides on a moving platform, or forward of it, where it swings free and knocks against the belt buckle.
Two workable answers. Shorten the strap so the camera sits above the belt line, high on the ribs where it is also faster to the eye, and accept that it is more in the way of your arms. Or lengthen it so the camera hangs clear below the belt entirely, which works well with a long lens and badly on a scramble.
What does not work is the middle, with the camera resting on the belt itself. That is the setup that bruises a hip bone over five miles, and people blame the camera when it is a two inch adjustment.
If you want the general comparison of carry positions without a pack in the picture, our longer piece on hiking with a camera covers weight, cold and the condensation problem on the way home.
What changes the second the pack comes off
This is the part that catches people, and it happens at every viewpoint.
If the camera strap is underneath the pack strap, taking the pack off means the camera comes with it, or the pack comes halfway off and hangs on the camera strap. Neither is good next to a drop.
Work out the order now rather than at the edge. Unbuckle the sternum strap, unbuckle the hip belt, take the pack off the shoulder that does not have the camera pad on it, then slide the remaining pack strap out from under the camera webbing while you hold the camera against your chest with the other hand. The camera never leaves you and the pack never hangs from it.
And the strap you set over a loaded pack is now several inches too long. A camera that sat at your ribs on the walk will be down past your hip the moment the pack is off, which is exactly when you are stepping around on rocks looking for the shot. A release that lets you shorten it in one pull, or take the body off entirely, is worth more at that moment than anywhere else on the walk.
Set it once, at the trailhead
Five minutes before you start, in the clothes you are going to wear:
- Camera strap on first, across the body, pad outboard on the shoulder.
- Pack on over it, hip belt first, and fit the pack normally. The camera strap should not have moved.
- Sternum strap last, and look at what it is crossing before you buckle it.
- Set the camera height with the pack loaded, not empty. Above the hip belt or well below it, never on it.
- Walk thirty steps, including a few downhill ones. Downhill is where a wrong length announces itself.
Thirty seconds of that saves an hour of fiddling with cold fingers.
The strap we make, and the length question behind all of this
That photograph is ours, from one of our own shoots, and it is the line this whole article is about. The pad sits out on the point of the shoulder rather than against the neck, the webbing runs down across the chest, and the body hangs at the opposite hip with the lens pointing down. The hand on the webbing is the gesture every photographer in this situation makes. Put a pack strap underneath that diagonal and the geometry is unchanged, which is the whole point of setting it up in this order.
The HiiGuy camera strap comes in two variations and the sizing is the only thing that separates them: the Regular adjusts up to 32 in on the body, the XXL adjusts up to 44 in. Both are heavy-duty polyester webbing with the same wide padded shoulder pad, the same stainless steel quick release and the same safety tether behind it. HiiGuy has made these in Los Angeles since 2016 and backs them for three full years.
For hiking specifically, take the XXL unless you are certain you do not need it. A pack strap, a mid layer and a shell between the webbing and your shoulder eat adjustment that was never in the number you measured indoors, and the way crossbody carry fails on a trail is almost always a strap that runs out two inches short. See it on Amazon.
The short version
Strap on before the pack, pad outboard, camera on your dominant side. Under the pack strap for a long walk, under the sternum strap only if you want to keep adjusting the pack. Camera above the hip belt or well below it, never resting on it. Set the length loaded, check it downhill, and know the order you are taking the pack off in before you are standing somewhere you would rather not drop a camera.
