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Micro Clutch Design Deep Dive
Dane Jones talks challenges of designing a mirrorless camera hand strap.
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After a whopping 3-year hiatus, we're finally back on Kickstarter with the Micro Clutch, a beautiful hand strap specifically for your mirrorless camera. Like any other Peak Design product, we made a big deal out of designing a small thing, pouring years of meticulous R&D effort into it.
Industrial Designer Dane Jones is the exceptionally talented human behind the design of Micro Clutch. He started working on this project as a Peak Design intern way back in 2019. The project had to be set aside and picked up again a few times before he really got going with it. After dozens of prototypes, real world testing with all kinds of photographers, and a generous dose of hard-fought epiphanies, the Micro Clutch was born.
Since our launch, we've received tons of thoughtful questions from backers and customers. Dane is here to shed some light on the key considerations and tradeoffs that went into designing Micro Clutch. Dane, take it away.
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Why did we place so much importance on having an integrated tool? Quick battery access. Because some users will need to twist or remove the plate to access batteries or SD cards, we opted to make the tool integrated into the plate itself so you’ll always have quick access instead of frantically trying to fish a tool out of your pack or pockets.
Why not just machine a hole in the base plate for battery door access? Because battery door size, shape, and location is not standardized across camera models. Micro Clutch was designed to be as universal as possible instead of model-specific. With the vast and ever-changing landscape of mirrorless cameras out there, we would have had to design dozens of different base plates just to cover a fraction of the most popular camera models. Some companies, like Really Right Stuff, have designed their entire business around making model-specific accessories. But at Peak, we simply don't have the resources or bandwidth to create products like that.
But there are plenty of other benefits of a universal design. For one, it allows users to re-use the Micro Clutch if they upgraded to a new camera with a similar body style. Having a universal design also allows users to use a single plate across multiple cameras with similar body styles.
Why didn't we integrate Arca compatibility into the base plate?
Another common question we get about Micro Clutch is around Arca compatibility. Micro Clutch comes with an Arca plate that can optionally be installed beneath the base plate. Many people want to know why we didn’t just add Arca geometry rails to the plate itself.
There’s two reasons why we chose not to do that. First, Micro Clutch specifically prioritizes compatibility with smaller mirrorless cameras because the added grip it provides is most useful on cameras that lack a useful grip feature. In order to make Micro Clutch compelling for smaller cameras, we fought hard to keep the baseplate size and thickness as minimal as possible. Forcing Arca integration into the baseplate would have increased its width by a full centimeter. On some smaller cameras, that meant the plate would be noticeably protruding outwards on the front and back sides of the camera body. We actually prototyped this and the result did not meet Peak’s requirements for being a great looking product.
Second, adding Arca rails to the baseplate does not inherently create compatibility with our Capture Camera Clip, which was a requirement for this product. You need the full geometry of our Standard Plate to maintain Capture compatibility and we solved that through the addition of an accessory plate. The Arca plate accessory that comes with Micro Clutch provides Capture compatibility, Arca tripod compatibility (both Peak Design and 3rd party tripods), and is also removable for those users who don't need it, so we feel like that is the best option.
We also added some functionality to make the accessory ARCA plate accessory delightful to use. It is designed to be constrained in the baseplate so the user isn’t required to re-align it during install. During removal, the ARCA is held in place by magnets so it won’t fall away from the baseplate during a battery swap.
Thanks for your support.
As always, thank you for the massive support we've gotten with our Micro Clutch Kickstarter. Thanks to you, the project was funded in less than an hour, raised a cool half-mil in a day, and is on it's way to crossing the $1M mark. All for a little mirrorless camera strap.
We continue to use crowdfunding for many reasons which we've shared in past Field Notes. But one big reason is that it keeps us close to our customers. The Micro Clutch design process had a ton of inputs, but the biggest one was you, our backers. For years, backers have been specifically requesting a hand strap for smaller cameras. I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to take those thousands of pieces of feedback and turn them into something real. We can't wait to get this product in your hands and on your cameras.
-Dane
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