My experience upgrading to the Spider Holster v3 (spoiler: I prefer v2)

I’ve been using the Spider Holster v2 system for years and consider it one of the best parts of my London event photographer kit, so naturally I was wondering if I should upgrade from the Spider Holster v2 kit to the new Spider Holster v3 kit which offers a new modular belt, and a fancy holster and plate redesign that now accommodates a bunch of new accessories. But is it worth upgrading from Spider Holster v2?

Is the v3 upgrade worth it? The quick answer…

Newcomers to Spider Holster will find a lot to love and it certainly looks very slick, if a little over-designed in my personal opinion. However, after a decade loving the v1 and v2 Spider Holster kit I’m disappointed in v3. The new holsters and pins are much bulkier, which seems to have made them noticeably fiddlier to use, and the holster paint is very easily damaged in normal use so they look cheap and scruffy after just a few weeks. It’s also unfortunate that they’ve chosen to make v1 and v2 incompatible with v3, so that existing customers who want to try any of the new stuff will need to re-buy their entire kit: belt, holsters, plates, the lot, a not-inexpensive three-figure purchase. NICE ONE.

The only thing I really liked was the new belt which looks and feels great and is more customisable than the previous belt, although fiddly to set up each time.

So here’s why I’m not a fan of the Spider Holster v3, and why I’ve gone back to using my v1 and v2 kit instead.

By the way, I’ve tried to speak with Spider Holster a couple of times about my experience – particularly how much fiddlier they are to use, and how badly scuffed my expensive holsters were after a few weeks of normal use. They’ve chosen to ignore me, despite being quick to respond to pre-sale enquiries. So they want your money, not your feedback. I suspect that attitude might have motivated some of their v3 design choices, but you be the judge.

Why I use v1 and v2 Spider Holsters

So why do I use Spider Holsters in the first place? Overall the Spider Holster v1 and v2 generations are up there with my ThinkTank Streetwalker Harddrive backpack and Peak Design Everyday Sling 6L as one of my favourite ever gear purchases. I love Spider Holsters because they get my cameras off my shoulders – goodbye straps, goodbye harness, and hello hip-mounted cameras.

I love it so much I wrote a long review of the Spider Holster system, comparing it to the Holdfast Moneymaker harness, and Peak Design’s Capture Plate system. Anecdotally I know several photographers who switched from both those systems after I raved about my Spiders, and haven’t switched back.

But the previous generations at least were kind of a ‘buy it for life’ sort of thing. I’ve never needed replacements, so I never kept up with their marketing, and completely missed the release of the extensive v3 range until recently.

What’s different about Spider Holster v3 compared to v1 and v2?

• there’s a brand new belt design that looks great, feels comfortable, and allows the attachment of multiple holsters anywhere you want all the way around your waist; it’s far and away the single best part of the entire v3 product range
• it has a new fatter and flatter pin with corresponding holster slot, which means your v1 and v2 kit won’t work with it
• the holsters themselves are much fatter and wider, and there’s no v3 mirrorless plates (although v2 mirrorless plates are still available on their site)
• the holsters are now black, instead of the raw metal of the previous version
• their new handstraps fit more easily onto the new plates
• the locking mechanism, which is now plastic instead of metal, can now be moved to the other side of the holster if you want
• there’s new pin attachments for accessories like flashes and water bottles, which only work with v3 holsters
• they’ve added an optional leather bag to the line-up
• and they’ve made their own version of the Holdfast Moneymaker harness which can be used in tandem with the holsters

My impressions after four weeks heavy use of Spider Holster v3

Around the end of April I managed to get a belt system with dual holsters, all in black, from The Flash Centre. And then I went straight into a busy few weeks of conferences and summer parties so I’ve had chance to test it extensively. Bear in mind I’ve been using v1 and v2 kit on the same sort of workload for almost ten years, so I know this system extremely well.

Here’s what I like and don’t like about it:

Spider Holster v3 pros

• The belt is really nice. This is the one thing I genuinely love about the v3 kit. It looks good and feels good, with lovely soft leather. It wraps around and uses Velcro to shut, then you hold it shut with a short strap and buckle. You have a lot of freedom to slot the holsters into positions that work for you – not that the original belt with fixed placement was a problem because most of the time I’m putting them in the exact same place. But the new belt allows to put them anywhere, and also load yourself up with a bunch of accessories if you want, like flashes, or a water bottle. But, of course, the belt only really works with v3 holsters.

• Now you can move the lock mechanism to the other side of the holster. Not something I ever wished for but more customisability is nice I guess.

• The system still works – just not as smoothly, in my experience. Spider Holsters get the weight off your shoulders, and free your cameras up to go anywhere. And they still do that! But with v3 I found myself having to wiggle cameras to get them in and out too often. Which brings us to…

Spider Holster v3 cons:

• The v3 pin/holster action feels awkward, where it never used to be. The problem seems to be that the new pin head is bigger, wider, and flatter, and that seems to make it noticeably less easy to remove and replace my cameras with v3 holsters than it was with the v1 and v2 setup. I almost always have to give them a little wiggle now.

I’ll balance this by saying it’s definitely a relative comparison, and new users may not even notice. But the difference is noticeable to an experienced user. I have colleagues who volunteered the same criticism after a few weeks with v3, that they never used to have to wiggle it to make it work, and now they do.

• The v3 plates are very big, with no smaller mirrorless versions available. They’re comically large on my Fujifilm X-T5 cameras, although I’m well aware that camera is particularly small. I prefer the smaller mirrorless plates with only one pin position, instead of these much larger plates that dictate which side each camera has to be attached (unless you rotate the plates between cameras periodically, which I recommend to even out shutter use).

To their credit, when asked about mirrorless plates before buying they assured me they’d tested the v3 plate on Fujifilm bodies. They explained how to remove the bottom square piece, rotate it 90 degrees, reattach it, then slide the plate further to one side to clear the battery compartment – although only just.

• The new holsters are pretty big too. If you’re used to those perfectly formed shiny metal holsters from v1 and v2 then you might be surprised at just how HUGE the new holsters are.

To be fair to Spider Holster, there sometimes comes a point in a product’s life where you have to go back to the drawing board to redesign it for a stronger future, and I imagine that’s what they’d argue happened here.

Perhaps that overly-flexible plastic clip has to be that massive to make them work with the new customisable belt, and perhaps they need the ‘ventilation’ slots and hexagonal dimples for weight-reduction purposes. Or something.

Perhaps the holsters themselves have to be so big to accommodate the newly-moveable plastic lock mechanism.

Perhaps the pins and holster slots have to be bigger, fatter, and flatter to work with the new flash and water bottle and harness and leather bag. (Yeah I know, this one’s a reach.)

All I know is these holsters barely fit in my bag now, look kind of ugly, and aren’t as nice to use. And I’m not sure I believe that they had to change the pin and slot size at all, but it sure is convenient that it forces existing customers to re-buy their entire kit if they want to try one element of it.

• There’s a lot of plastic parts now, where previously there were none. That massive rear clip on the holster feels like plastic to me, and worryingly easy to flex too far and snap it off accidentally. The locking mechanism is also plastic. All of this stuff used to be metal.

• Most annoyingly, and inexcusably, the holster paint doesn’t stand up to regular use. Whatever they’ve painted the holsters with has easily scraped off along the contact areas after just four weeks of professional event and wedding use. I suppose some people consider the well-worn look to be desirable, but I think it just looks scruffy and cheap.

If I wanted to sell these holsters on the second hand market the value will have dropped dramatically based on how damaged they look. This is such a visibly obvious problem that I seriously expected them to take immediate ownership of it when I complained. Instead they just ignored my complaint – twice.

Don’t take my word for it, compare four weeks of regular use on two v3 holsters to almost a decade of use on one of my raw metal v1 holsters:

Should Spider Holster v1 and v2 users upgrade to Spider Holster v3?

If you’re new to Spider Holsters you’ll probably like v3 because it’s still a superior camera attachment system than straps or harnesses – even Spider Holster’s own harness. You won’t know how much better it used to be, and you may not care how easily damaged it is (even if superficially).

But as it stands for most v1 and v2 users, unless your kit is on its last legs, or the older design feels outdated, or you’ve been longing for a better flash attachment, or a water bottle attachment, or you want to use a harness with it, or you just want some shiny new gear (won’t be shiny for long though…) I really don’t think you need v3.

The belt is a great upgrade, I did enjoy wearing it even though attaching the holsters before each shoot is a drag (it’s much harder to pack with them left attached). And overall the system does work – that’s why I’ve raved about it for years.

So if the v3 holsters felt like better quality materials, without the paint job, and if the redesigned pin and slot worked as smoothly as their predecessor, I’d probably just deal with the added bulk and even the end of backwards compatibility, whether that was a deliberately cynical capitalist decision or not.

But overall I feel disappointed and a bit ripped off. I’ve gone back to my v1 and v2 Spider Holster kit because it looks better, works better, and stands up to normal use much, much better.