4 min read

While traveling, walking around town, hiking, or doing a photo shoot; having your camera at the ready is always important. Usually, you have to sacrifice the ability to quickly draw your camera for the safety of your favorite shooter. This may be a camera strap, a chest strap, a hand grip, or some sort of wrist anchor; but they are all sacrificing something. Spider Holster has been known for solving this problem, but most of their solutions are usually heavy and bulky to match a large DSLR. Cameras are getting smaller and more powerful, so why can’t the way we carry them be evolving too? Spider Holster has a Kickstarter for those small to medium sized cameras, and they call it the SpiderLight Holster.

As the name implies, SpiderLight is light, barely adding any additional weight or bulk to your favorite mid-sized shooter. I tested the SpiderLight with both my Sony A6300 and A7rii. Since both of these cameras are fairly small when it comes to DSLRs, they did not weigh my belt down too much. That gets me to the point of mentioning that the SpiderLight hooks directly to your belt. This is nice because it lessens the awkwardness of mounting a camera to your hip. However, if your camera is on the heavier side or you are mounting a telephoto lens to your camera for the day, you can feel the weight a whole lot more. Spider Holster does make a version of their holster line that mounts to a side holster belt that lightens this load, but it adds a different look, and it doesn’t scream minimal.

The holster consists of two components: the baseplate and the belt clip.

The belt clip is straightforward: it mounts to a belt or an additional backpack mount. There is one release lever that has two separate positions. You can put it in the secure position, which locks the camera in until you press the release lever; or the quick-draw position, which makes it easy to pull your camera out, but doesn’t secure it if you move too quickly. I kept mine in the secure position for most of my testing and it is very secure! I was able to go hiking with it attached to my hip without any issues at all.

The second component of this rig is the baseplate. The base plate is adjustable and strong but does take a little maneuvering to get it in the right place. You can adjust the base plate on two axes for just the right fit; I recommend tightening the bottom screw with a flathead or a coin to get it snug. The attached hand tightening mechanism seem a bit flimsy and I wouldn’t risk it being loose.

The only real issue that I personally had with the SpiderLight was that the base plate needs to be mounted to a very flat, rectangular camera base. The A6300 and A7rii’s native bottoms are fine for this, but if you normally use a battery grip, like me, the baseplate is just too small. You can maneuver it on, but it does not sit flush enough for my liking. If you intend to mount this on something with a wider base, even if the weight of the camera isn’t substantial, I would go with one of their larger holsters.

This was my first long use with a holster system for my shooting, and I was very happy with the functionality and performance. I felt very secure with leaving the camera on my hip and felt even more ready to catch that shot. I normally use a handgrip or a long camera strap that I use like a sling, but neither of those options free your hands and keep your camera at the ready at all times. The SpiderLight Holster does and does it well.