Moonrise & Aurora

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I saw a guy with something that looked like an L-Bracket, but positioned the flash directly over the camera. Then he went and pivoted his camera 90-degrees into a portrait orientation by turning it in place. The rest of the bracket stayed oriented vertically and his grip didn't have to change. The entire thing was mounted on a pretty sexy monopod with 3 "toes".

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I've seen flip-grips with a flash mount that pivots back on itself when you change the camera orientation, but that doesn't work when the camera is mounted on a tripod (or monopod). – Eric Falsken Aug 26 '12 at 18:32
What do you mean by 'positioned the lens directly over the camera'? Are you talking about a tripod collar? – Itai Aug 26 '12 at 22:06
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Or something like this from this discussion – Russell McMahon Aug 27 '12 at 0:16
That's it @RussellMcMahon! What's that thing called? – Eric Falsken Aug 27 '12 at 18:58

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You are probably talking about a flash bracket.

I'd guess something along the lines of the Stroboframe Camera Flip bracket. The design has been around a long time and the patents have expired, so there are now several competing brands with more-or-less the same design, and Stroboframe's own prices are significantly lower than they were when I bought one back in the '80s for use on my last-resort backup 35mm system for weddings. (The current price is in the $US 40 range; it was more than $US 100 in '87. Adjusted for inflation, it's pretty much free now by comparison.)

Unlike camera-rotation brackets with their large and obvious mechanical arc mechanism, it only has two positions (portrait or landscape) and the mechanism is a whole lot less obvious—just the frame, the L-shaped camera platform, and two solid links between the two that are only really visible during the flip operation. It's also a whole lot less sturdy that the much more expensive arc rotation brackets, but it's not intended to be a tripod head or mounting plate—it's pretty much expected that your hand will be on the camera, even when used on a tripod/monopod.

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Perfect. Like you said, there seem to be many of them now called "Flash Flip Brackets" of varying qualities and costs. ($50-150) The Arc/rotation brackets are a lot more expensive ($250+) but have the added advantage of letting you rotate the camera to any angle and being a lot more durable. Thanks! – Eric Falsken Aug 27 '12 at 19:06
up vote 2 down vote

Did you mean it positioned the flash directly over the camera?

This would be my guess:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/423692-REG/Custom_Brackets_DIGITALPRO_Digital_PRO_Camera_Rotation.html

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That's it....or something like it. Do I call those a Rotation Bracket? Where can I find more like them either from B&H or Amazon? – Eric Falsken Aug 27 '12 at 18:59
up vote 1 down vote

Sounds like you saw a pano head. These things are used to eliminate parallax errors when rotating the camera while creating panoramic photos. Saves a lot of time in post processing.

For more information take a look here: http://www.panoguide.com/howto/panoramas/panohead.jsp

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Nope. It rotated the camera orientation, not panning side-to-side. – Eric Falsken Aug 27 '12 at 19:00

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