Open three strap listings in three tabs and you get three numbers that look comparable and are not. One says 39 to 57 inches. One says 36 to 65.7 inches. One says it adjusts up to 44 inches. Nothing on any of those pages tells you which part of the strap is being measured, so you cannot line them up, and the search for a long camera strap turns into a guess with a return label attached.
The fix is not a better listing. It is a piece of string, ten minutes, and a number of your own that no maker can define differently.
This is that method. There is no product in it until the very end, on purpose.
Three listings, three conventions, and nobody says which
Start with why the numbers do not line up, because it explains why the string is necessary.
Peak Design publishes the Slide as adjustable from 39 in to 57 in. That is the strap laid out, end to end, as a total length.
BlackRapid publishes the Sport Breathe as adjustable from 36.0 to 65.7 in, and in the same specification lists a pad 16 in long and webbing 1 in wide. So 16 of those inches are shoulder pad, which does not stretch, does not adjust, and sits in a fixed position in the middle of the range.
Other makers quote how far the strap adjusts once it is on a body, which is a smaller number describing a different thing entirely.
Three conventions: total webbing end to end, adjustable range including a fixed pad, and adjustment measured on the wearer. A 44 and a 57 from two of those conventions can describe straps that hang a camera in exactly the same place. There is no formula for converting between them, because none of the three pages state which one they are using.
What you need, and it is already in the house
A bootlace, a length of string, a phone cable, a roll of ribbon. Anything limp, at least five feet long, that does not stretch. A stretchy band will read short under its own tension and the number will be wrong by inches.
A tape measure, or a ruler and some patience.
Your camera, with the lens you usually put on it. Not the body on its own. A camera balances differently with a zoom on the front and that changes where it wants to sit.
And the clothes you shoot in. Do this in a t-shirt in a warm kitchen and the number will be two or three inches short of what you need in a jacket in November.
Measure the loop, not the drop
Here is the idea the whole method rests on, and it is the thing those product pages are quietly measuring without telling you.
A strap is a closed loop. It runs from one attachment point on the camera, up over you, around, and back down to the other attachment point. The camera is not hanging off the end of a line. The camera is part of the circle, and it closes the circle.
Which means the useful measurement is the whole way round, from camera back to camera, following the path the webbing really takes over your body. Not the vertical distance from shoulder to hip. A circumference, not a height.
Measure the loop and you have a number that corresponds to something physical. Every other approach needs an assumption about your build to be any use, and your build is the thing the assumption keeps getting wrong.
The method, step by step
One. Put the camera where you want it to end up. Hold it there with one hand. Hip bone for crossbody carry. Against the ribs if you want it high and fast to the eye. Below the hip with the lens hanging clear if you are carrying a telephoto. Stand normally while you do this, do not help it along by leaning.
Two. Take one end of the string and hold it at the camera's left attachment point, pinched against the body with the same hand that is holding the camera.
Three. Run the string up the path a strap would take. For crossbody that is diagonally up across your front, over the opposite shoulder, down across your back and round to your waist. For a shoulder carry it goes straight up to the near shoulder and over. Let the string sit against you the way webbing would, following your chest rather than cutting the corner across it. That curve is where the inches hide.
Four. Bring it back to the camera's other attachment point and pinch it there.
Five. Keep both pinches, take the loop off, lay it flat and measure between your fingers. Write it down.
Six. Do the whole thing again. First attempts come out short, every time, because people unconsciously pull the string tight across themselves. The second number is usually an inch or two longer and it is the honest one. If the two readings disagree by more than about two inches, do a third.
Add for the hardware, because the loop closes through it
You just measured camera to camera. The webbing does not reach that far, and this is where people end up a size short.
Between the end of the webbing and the camera there is always something: a swivel hook, a split ring, a screw mount with a plate, a sewn loop threaded through a lug. That piece has a length, and it is part of the circle you measured but it is not part of the strap.
Do not use a number from an article for this. Use the one in your hand. Take whatever connector you intend to use, lay it against the tape, and measure it from where the webbing attaches to where it grips the camera. Double it, since there are two of them, and subtract that from your loop measurement. What is left is the webbing length the loop actually needs.
If the strap you are considering mounts to the tripod socket on the base rather than to the lugs, measure that connector the same way, and remember the attachment point has moved to the bottom of the camera. Our piece on tripod socket or strap lugs covers what that change does to how the camera hangs.
One more subtraction that catches people out. If the strap has a fixed shoulder pad, as the BlackRapid figures above show, that pad is inside the length and will not move far. Its position in the loop is roughly fixed by where the adjusters sit, so a strap with a long pad has less usable adjustment than its range suggests.
Calibrate against the strap you already own
This is the step that turns your number into something you can shop with, and almost nobody does it.
Take the strap currently on your camera. Attach it, wear it, and notice where the camera lands. Then take it off, lay it flat, and measure it end to end, webbing only, excluding the connectors.
Now you have a pair: a real strap of a known length, and a known result on your actual body. If the camera sits four inches too high, you need roughly eight more inches of webbing, because the loop crosses you twice and the slack divides between both sides. If it hangs two inches too low, you need about four fewer.
That pairing is worth more than any chart, because it is measured on you, wearing your clothes, carrying your camera. It also gives you a sanity check on the string: if the string number and the owned-strap number disagree wildly, one of them is wrong and it is usually the string, pulled tight.
When you need a long camera strap, and when you only think you do
With a real number in hand, this question gets easy, and the answer surprises people.
A long camera strap is not mainly a tall person's problem. Measure the loop on a short broad photographer and a tall slim one and the broad one often comes out longer, because the loop goes around a chest as well as down a torso. Girth is in the measurement twice. Height is in it once.
Four things reliably push the number up, and only one is height. Being broad through the chest and shoulders. A winter coat, which can add three or four inches on its own. A backpack strap already occupying the shortest diagonal, forcing the camera strap to ride outside it. And a long lens, which has to hang clear of your hip rather than bumping it, pushing the camera lower and the loop longer.
If none of those apply to you, a standard length is probably fine and the measurement has just saved you from buying up unnecessarily. If two or three apply, you now know by how much instead of guessing.
Write down three numbers, not one
Keep these in your phone, because you will be reading a listing on a phone when it matters.
Your loop measurement, in the clothes you actually wear. The webbing length after the connector subtraction. And the length of the strap you already own, with a one-word note on where it put the camera: high, right, low.
With those three you can read any listing. When a page quotes a range, check your webbing number falls inside it with room at both ends, because a strap used at the extreme of its adjustment has a long tail flapping at one end or no slack at all at the other. When a page quotes one number with no range, you know it is not adjustable and your number has to be close to exact. When a page quotes a number and you cannot tell which convention it is using, you now have the comparison that settles it: your own strap.
If you would rather have a starting estimate than get the string out, our chart of strap length by height and carry position gives you one, and seven ways to carry a camera all day covers what each carry position is good for before you commit to a number for it.
And then, the easy way out
Honesty about where we come into this: all of the above is useful whatever you end up buying, and the reason we wrote it is that a wrongly sized strap is the single most common reason a good one gets sent back. The photograph is ours, and it is a loop doing exactly what the method describes, closing through the connector you can see at his hip.
The HiiGuy camera strap comes in two variations and sizing is the only difference: Regular adjusts up to 32 in on the body, XXL adjusts up to 44 in. Everything else is identical in both, the heavy-duty polyester webbing, the wide padded shoulder pad, the stainless steel quick release and the safety tether. Those figures are the adjustment on the body, which is the third convention described above, so compare them against your own measurement rather than against a total-length number from another listing. HiiGuy has made these in Los Angeles since 2016 and backs them with three full years of warranty. See it on Amazon.
Ten minutes with a bootlace, and the next strap you buy is the one you keep.
