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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Education Field Instructional

How to Maintain Your Leather Camera Strap

Chris Gampat
No Comments
10/31/2015
3 Mins read

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (1 of 10)ISO 4001-200 sec at f - 2.8

If you look up lots of the most popular leather camera straps online, chances are very high that we’re going to show up in the search results. We’ve got loads of reviews on leather straps and folks ask us every day about these straps. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where we’ve rounded up many of our favorites. But once you’ve got a strap, how do you take care of it?

We’ve got a quick tutorial for you right here.

What You’ll Need

  • Clean rags or paper towels
  • Water
  • Leather moisturizer oil. I use Otter.
  • Some sort of wax. I also use OtterWax, but Beeswax is what many strap manufacturers use.
  • A candle or a blow dryer. For my purposes, a candle works better
  • Clean hands
  • A clean work surface.
  • Your Leather Camera Strap

Before you go on: I don’t recommend that everyone does this. It’s a fairly long process and requires being conservative about everything you do. A little goes a long way, and we say that a couple of times here in the piece.

The Process

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (2 of 10)ISO 4001-200 sec at f - 2.8

Before we go into this, I want you to consider the fact that I’m doing this demonstration using the TAP and DYE Legacy shoulder strap attached to my Olympus OMD EM5. It’s been used a lot of times and even started to develop cracks from the use.

See that crack in it? Yeah, that’s proof of how much this thing has been used.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (3 of 10)ISO 4001-200 sec at f - 2.8

First off, you’ll want to use a clean paper towel/rag and wipe down the strap with water to give it a bit of a cleaning. Wrap the paper towel around the strap, pinch the wet area and run it down the strap.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (4 of 10)ISO 4001-200 sec at f - 2.8

After this, apply oil to a paper towel. Since this is a longer strap, I’m applying a rather healthy amount. Considering that I’ve done this with many other straps, it’s also the first time I’m doing it with this particular strap in these images.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (5 of 10)ISO 4001-200 sec at f - 2.8

Rub the oil down on the strap in the same way that you did when cleaning it with water. Be sure to apply lots of pressure and get the oil in there. This oil moisturizes the strap and keeps it pliable. In the image above, the darker area is clearly the oil-moisturized area.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (9 of 10)ISO 2501-200 sec at f - 2.8

After this process, use the wax and rub it against the strap. But be conservative about its application–a little goes a long way here. When you’re done with this, bring the waxed side (the outer side) into the candle and run the strap along the flame. Don’t get too close; if you start to see black ash, then pull back, but you’re bound to get a bit of it. The alternative is to use a blow dryer, but that’s less fun and much more time-consuming.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (8 of 10)ISO 2501-200 sec at f - 2.8

Using your fingers smooth out the wax. Repeat the flame process. Even if there is black ash on it, don’t worry about it just yet.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (7 of 10)ISO 2501-200 sec at f - 2.8

Keep doing this to the strap until you’ve got a new thin seal on top of the seal that the manufacturer put on it.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Care of your Leather Camera Strap (10 of 10)ISO 2501-200 sec at f - 2.8

Remember the oil treatment you did before? It’s time to do it again. This oil treatment will make the strap more pliable, clean off any ash and also remove excess wax.

Now you’re all set.

camera leather leather camera strap oil Wax
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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