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.
I get a lot of questions around why we decided to make a custom plate removal tool for Micro Clutch instead of integrating a 4mm hex tool that is used in the rest of our products.
Early versions of the Micro Clutch plate did contain an integrated 4mm hex tool. Unfortunately, we also got a lot of user feedback that this version of the plate was too big for the cameras we were designing for. We went back to the drawing board and came up with a custom flat tool and fastener that not only looked great, but also worked great with respect to removing the fastener. Going the custom tool route allowed us to reduce the plate thickness by a few millimeters. That may not sound like a lot, but it makes a big visual difference. After seeing prototypes of the new version, many people didn't realize the Micro Clutch plate wasn’t part of the camera until we showed them.
It also makes a functional difference. By lowering the stack height of the plate, it allows you to set your camera down on a flat surface and sit upright. Adding just a few mm of height to the baseplate will cause many cameras to tip forward when placed on a flat surface. In theory it doesn't seem like a big problem, but in practice it's quite annoying.
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.
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.
For years we've sold a larger hand strap for DSLR cameras called Clutch. Many folks have wondered why we didn't just shrink that product down for smaller cameras.
The answer to that is pretty straightforward: traditional hand straps are designed to press your palm against your camera's hand grip. That works great when the grip is the same size as your hand. But mirrorless cameras have small hand grips or no hand grip. You don't really hold them with your palms, you hold them with your fingers. So we had to reimagine the hand strap from the ground up to work with how smaller mirrorless cameras interface with your hand.
It may not seem like it from its simple shape, but designing Micro Clutch's hand pad was probably the most difficult part of this project. After rummaging through Peak’s material library, I think I made somewhere between 100 and 150 unique hand pad prototypes to find the ideal mix of comfort, support, and clean aesthetics. From foam-filled, laminated pads, to molded elastomeric rings…we even made a suede taco wrap with a magnetic closure. It was very difficult to find something that was comfortable both over your fingers and under them. I learned the hard way that increasing the pad cushioning actually made it less flexible and therefore less comfortable as it weaves between your fingers. Ironically nothing worked as well as one of the first prototypes which was relatively simple in construction, so we went back to that idea and refined it for the final version of Micro Clutch.
We’ve been fielding a few questions on L-plate compatibility, specifically asking why Micro Clutch was not designed to stack with third party L-plates (or why we didn't integrate an L-plate directly into the Micro Clutch design). Great question.
We designed the Micro Clutch baseplate to have a quick and efficient install/removal process with or without the accessory Arca plate. To accomplish this, we engineered the Arca plate to stay attached and aligned during removal of the baseplate. Adding a third party L-plate over the Micro Clutch baseplate, while possible with the right fastener, would complicate this process because it lacks the necessary hardware to keep it attached and aligned to the baseplate. As a result, we did not design that requirement into the product.
We’ve also been asked why we didn’t just make the baseplate an L-plate. Another great question. Universal L-plates have an adjustment slot to position the bracket in the perfect position on the left side of your camera. Micro Clutch also has an adjustment slot, but this is used to position the baseplate pivot close to the right (grip) side of your camera. You can’t have a single piece plate with one adjustment slot and accomplish both positioning of the L-bracket and the pivot simultaneously. As much as we love L-plates, we feel those are different products from Micro Clutch. We didn’t see a compelling, comfortable, minimalist hand strap for smaller mirrorless cameras on the market, so that's what we set out to make. Micro Clutch is first and foremost a hand strap optimized for smaller mirrorless cameras, especially those without a built in grip.
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
© 2026 Peak Design
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