Today I want to talk about the lens flipper which is a very simply but very useful photography accessory made by Go Wing.

The lens flipper serves two main purposes. It lets you easily carry and extra lens with you and it makes it super easy to swap out lenses on the fly.

This past weekend I volunteered as a photographer at a local St. Baldrick event. In case you don’t know, it’s a great charity, dedicated to making a difference for kids with cancer by funding lifesaving childhood cancer research.

I’ll just give them a plug here and say that you should check out stbaldricks.org for some more information and ways to get involved.

Being in a room full of kids and adults I wanted to keep myself pretty mobile so I didn’t want to carry a bag, or one of those clunky lens pouches.

And as with other typical event shoots I wanted to take both my 24-70 and my 70-200 so I can take all types of shots.

The fastest way to accomplish this to carry 2 cameras, one with each lens, that way you’re always ready for the shot. But that doesn’t work for everyone, especially if you have a main camera and then a lower-end backup.

Also, you may not be a professional and only have one body, but you still want to carry an extra lens with you.

If you’re not carrying 2 camera bodies with you then you’re going to have to figure out how you want to carry the extra lens. Let’s pretend you’re using a bag, and although this is clearly oversized, I’m just going to use it for this example.

Alright, so I have my lens in a bag or pouch and now I need to switch lenses. That’s super easy and relatively fast if I have a surface that you can use. You can take out the one lens, put it down, unscrew the cap, remove the lens from your camera, put it down, move the cap over, screw in the new lens and then screw the cap on the old lens and put it in your bag.

Now, what happens when I don’t have a surface. I can go through the same thing while putting the lens I remove in the bag or you have to keep the lenses balanced while you make the transition.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is totally doable but there is a better, easier and faster way to do this using the lens flipper. Essentially, it’s a double sided locking lens cap with a strap.

That means that you can attach 2 lenses to it at once, one from each side. I’m using the canon mount lens flipper but they do sell ones for the Fuji X, Pentax K, Nikon, Sony A and E mounts and then finally a micro 4/3rd version.

When you clip a lens in you just line up the red dot on the lens with the red dot on the lens flipper, and then rotate the lens to lock it in. To remove the lens, you press the black button which releases the lens and then rotate it to unlock.

I’m going to use the lens flipper with a strap but there is also a clip that you you can attach to your backpack strap, belt or something like a Think Tank belt and it works the same way. Basically, you take the lens you’re not using and you just wear it around your shoulder like you would your camera. When you’re ready to switch you just remove the lens from the camera, attach it to the lens flipper, remove the lens from the lens flipper and attach it to the camera. Super simple. And again, when I want to go back to my original lens, I just do the same thing.

Once you get used to it, the motion becomes second nature.

So you can see that this will save you some time which is critical when you’re trying to get that perfect shot. The lens flipper also comes with a silicone cap that can be used to cover the exposed end of the lens flipper. This is especially important if you’re in an environment where you are likely to get some dirt on the exposed end which could then end up inside the lens. Overall this is a great product which does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

If you like to carry 2 lenses and want the ability to quickly switch between them I would suggest that you check out the Lens Flipper from Go Wing. I just keep it on one of my lenses in my camera bag instead of a cap so that I always have it available. I hope that this article and the video were helpful.

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I received the Lens Flippter from GoWing in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.