Like many others, I used a L-bracket on my previous camera for quick & easy mounting on the tripod in portrait orientation. The bracket did make getting to the remote shutter release port slightly inconvenient but not enough to lose any sleep over. My larger gripe with the camera L-bracket was its ergonomic interference with a comfortable grip on the camera body.
Now that I’m using a camera with an articulating rear screen, the L-bracket issues have only grown worse. It was obvious to me that having a separate L-bracket to act as an interface between camera and tripod would be ideal and that surely someone made such a product. Maybe my search skills aren’t what they used to be, but I came up empty handed looking for such a bracket.
It was also obvious to me that making such a bracket shouldn’t be difficult, so I assembled the following parts into the adapter L-bracket I envisioned;
A universal camera plate of your liking (I used an old Kirk plate)
It was only a matter of drilling a few holes in the bracket and picking up some 1/4-20 machine screws to put it all together. It works exactly as intended and IMO doesn’t look too Rube Goldberg. The entire project cost me under $30, not including the old Kirk plate I had kicking around (a universal QR plate can be purchased for $15).
Here’s the bracket mounted on the tripod. My camera uses a dedicated EOS R6II plate mounted on the bottom, which slides into the clamp allowing the camera to mount vertically;
I find a lot of people that complain about L-brackets are using bad L-brackets that are not custom designed for their camera (like the 3-legged thing universal plate). I’ve had nothing but love for my RRS L plates, even though I can’t stand the company (long story).
Making the L-bracket for the tripod instead of the camera is a great idea, Jim, especially since it makes the system camera independent. Usually, I’ll just flop over the ball head, but that doesn’t guarantee leveling very well and it can interfere with the legs. I’ll do some poking around to see if I can find it commercially, but your solution is probably cheaper than anything pre-made.
I just spent some time looking and didn’t find anything. It’s odd because all they’d need to do is make a double dovetail on an L-shaped piece of aluminum, make a clamp to fit the bottom of the camera and you’re done. I’m thinking some people make pseudo gimbals that could be repurposed to act like that, but they’re outrageously expensive for the most part.
Exactly. It’s universal, adds no weight or bulk to the camera, and works with or without a vertical grip. It could certainly be made lighter and more elegant by someone like Kirk, RRS, Wimberly, etc.
Thanks Matt! I didn’t have any issue finding a bracket for the R6II (with or without the vertical grip), but not the “off camera” bracket as above.
I used RRS L one piece L brackets on my Canon bodies for years but the RRS two piece modular bracket for Sony A7RIVA was mess with an extra heavy ring around the battery door and really compromised stiffness in the portrait orientation. I found a used one piece RRS Sony bracket without the silly ring which solved things, but for my second body I got a ROGETI bracket I like a lot more - stiff, light, multiple spirit bubble levels (but it doesn’t fit properly with the QR clamp on the RRS BH 55 or BH 40). Fortunately the Leofoto G4 head, I use now, holds it just fine and is a much better head than the RRS for landscape work and is lighter.
My main camera is still the Canon 5D4 which doesn’t have an articulating screen, and I have a regular L bracket on it, and it works just fine. My other camera though, the Canon RP has an articulating screen, and I really had to fight getting it to work with a L bracket. I ended up making a custom L bracket by bolting a small 1” wide Arca plate to the base Arca plate to make a L bracket with a really short side. It works OK but I have to say that I really like your idea of mounting a L bracket to the tripod instead of the camera. That’s some really nice out of the box thinking! If I ever change my main camera to one with an articulating screen, I think I’ll do what you’ve done. Thanks for sharing!
