The Nikon Coolpix 100 comes with a handy cloth carrying case, perfect for slinging on your belt. Its velcro closure makes it simple to open and use the camera anytime you need. But after a while, the velcro wears out and so does the strap your belt is meant to fit through. So when mine began to look like it wouldn't work on my belt anymore, I made some changes to keep it going.
First I replaced the belt strap with an identically shaped piece of leather cut from an old wallet, but that wore out just as fast as the original material did. Then one day in the toy store I saw a really sturdy leather yo-yo case with a belt hook made of solid, heavy plastic. I thought, "Great! This will never wear out." and I set out to fit it to my camera case.
The yo-yo holder is made by Yomega and sells for about $6.00.
On the back you can see the slots cut for the clip. I had to do the same for the fabric of the camera case. Since the material is nowhere as rigid as the leather, I backed it with leather on both sides and stitched it through to hold the weight of the camera without tearing the case apart.
The clip is made all in one piece and clips to itself at the top with a one-way fastener. I had to pry it apart with two small screwdrivers to remove it from the yo-yo case.
Because the clip is open at the bottom, it slips on and off the belt without unbuckling,
but it still keeps a pretty tight grip.
(Okay,
so it's not perfectly straight.)
After a lot of use, the Velcro closure on the top flap of the case wore out.
It wouldn't stay shut and I worried about dropping the camera out of the case,
so it needed a more secure fastener. A snap was out of the question
because it might put too much pressure on the camera (and I already take too
many pictures of the inside of the case).
On my first attempt, I tried sewing a button on the case below the velcro and
an elastic band to the top flap (like a ponytail holder). It made for very
simple one-handed opening and closing and it held much better than the velcro,
but the elastic itself wore out pretty quickly.
Now I have a large size skirt hook closure I bought from the fabric store. This works very well and it feels like it will outlast the material of the carrying case.
