L-Brackets

Is an L-Bracket necessary? Absolutely not. Does it make your life easier? Yes. Yes it does. So what is an L-Bracket and how is it beneficial? Let's discuss.

An example of an L-Bracket

As you can see from the picture above, an L-Bracket is simply a plate which screws to the tripod mount in the bottom of your camera, and which replaces the standard plate which came with your tripod. The benefits of this are quite obvious: with one of these you will no longer have to tilt your tripod head 90˚ to take a portrait photo. Instead you can simply place your camera into the tripod clamp in landscape or portrait orientation as you see fit.

An L-Bracket mounted in Portrait orientation.

Now, that's the simple bit. The problem with L-Brackets is that they need to attached to both a camera and a tripod to be of any use at all, and no two cameras are the same shape. And tripod clamps are a bloody minefield as well.

What this means is that you may struggle to find an L-Bracket which fits both your camera, and your tripod clamp.

As far as getting an L-Bracket to fit your camera, there are L-Brackets available which some clever sods have created which are designed specifically to fit certain models of cameras and are shaped so as to fit precisely around the curves and give access to the battery compartment and the side ports without getting in the way. However, these tend to be extremely expensive and are not available for every model of camera.

To get round this, you can get Universal L-Brackets, which are much less expensive and will fit most (not all) cameras, but you will very likely have to accept some compromises. Like losing easy access to your battery compartment or your side ports. Or both.

Now, when it comes to tripod clamps, there is no simple solution here either. Some tripod manufacturers create tripod clamps which are only designed to accept the plate which comes with that specific model of tripod and if you have one of these tripods you may well be screwed. However, all is not lost. Believe it or not there is something approaching a "standard" tripod clamp/plate system, and this is called the  "Arca-Swiss Quick Release System". This was developed by a company called Arca-Swiss back in the 1990s and has been adopted by photographers all over the world. Because it is now so ubiquitous, it is reasonably easy to buy both a tripod head/clamp and an L-Bracket which are "Arca-Swiss compatible". With both of these, you should be reasonably assured that you will have a system which should work together however, be well warned, some manufacturers of Arca-Swiss compatible equipment play pretty fast and loose with the standard so you would be very, very wise to do your research and make absolutely sure that the tripod head and clamp you choose, will work with the L-Bracket you're interested in.

All of that said, if you do choose to wade through this particular quagmire of unnecessary complication, the rewards are a much simpler and convenient way to mount your camera to your tripod.

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