L brackets, quality & price?

[DScience]

Hi there,

I have recently gotten into landscape photography, and thus wanted to get an L bracket for my D750.

When I looked at the leading brands (Kirk & RRS), they are insanely expensive! ($130+)

Then I found a Sunwayfoto, who is known for pretty good quality equipment, for $75, and an even less expensive brand called Neewer off of Amazon for $30.

Thus three 'tiers' of L brackets, from $30 - $150.

I am just really not sure why there is such a deviation in prices?

I ended up going with the cheapest one, and I have to say it works well. It's not perfectly CNC machined, but it's still high quality. It's as light as the more expensive, and it seems to fit the camera pretty good. When attached properly, it seems to be very secure and doesn't move on the camera.

Thus, what would I gain by getting the more expensive ones?

 

[tirediron]

Partly, I'm sure, for the name, but a lot of it has to do with the machining. Kirk & RRS are producing small lots to a high standard. Companies like Neewer are producing large lots to an acceptable standard.

 

[jsecordphoto]

I bought one of those $30 ones for my D750 off Amazon and it works great. After I got mine two of my buddies got one for their 610 and 800e, both are happy with theirs as well. The RRS brackets are obviously nicer, but not $120 nicer in my opinion.

 

[KmH]

No doubt.
An L bracket is a pretty simple piece of kit.

Anyone wondering how the pricing can vary so much only needs to look at Apple products, and Apple's bank balance.
Lots of people will pay out the wazoo for some shine, some hype, and a brand name.
Cha-Ching ! ! !

 

[Watchful]

People pay for what is called perceived value which in fact has little to nothing to do with actual value. The idea is that if they are charging so much for it, it must be worth it. It isn't usually.
As artists my wife and I saw this in 2006 when the housing market crashed and people stopped buying art in the 1-10,000 dollar range, but the 50,000 and up range never lost a beat, sales never stalled in that area, so the obvious answer was to re-price all our art and we never had to deal with declining sales.

 

[tirediron]

No doubt.
An L bracket is a pretty simple piece of kit.

Anyone wondering how the pricing can vary so much only needs to look at Apple products, and Apple's bank balance.
Lots of people will pay out the wazoo for some shine, some hype, and a brand name.
Cha-Ching ! ! !

People pay for what is called perceived value which in fact has little to nothing to do with actual value. The idea is that if they are charging so much for it, it must be worth it. It isn't usually.
As artists my wife and I saw this in 2006 when the housing market crashed and people stopped buying art in the 1-10,000 dollar range, but the 50,000 and up range never lost a beat, sales never stalled in that area, so the obvious answer was to re-price all our art and we never had to deal with declining sales.

Granted, there is some price premium for the RRS and Kirk gear, but a LOT of what you're paying for is both quality and quality control, in other words not only are the dimension and tolerances going to be a LOT better in the $150 product, they're going to make sure that no 'oopses' leave the factory.

I'll again trot out the story I've posted before of my brothers dabble in 'economy'. He wanted a set of extension tubes, but wasn't quite ready to shell out the $150 for the Kenko tubes, so opted for a $30 MiC set. They looked great, seemed to be reasonably well made, and the first one mounted on to the camera body with zero issue, but... it wouldn't come off. Nope, no way, not a friggin' hope. He wound up spending quite a few dollars at the local repair store (a hacksaw was involved) and now has a nice set of perfectly functioning Kenko tubes and a nice souvenir bill.

A higher price isn't always worth the cost, but more often than not, there's a reason for it.

 

[Derrel]

Those uber-cheap extension tubes are really a good example of junk, junkier, junkier yet, and junkiest. The $39 to $7.99 price range ones are laughable! Considering how hamstrung most cameras are without FULL electronic interface between newer lenses and newer cameras, there's often no benefit, and plenty of downside, to going with the MIC cheapies, just from a regular, everyday plain vanilla photography standpoint--not even considering that ultra-junky construction, substandard machining, and the 7th-grade-level engineering some of these MIC products seem to have all too often.

An L-bracket on the other hand? Fairly simple, and a $30 bent piece of metal ought to be able to be machined well enough to fit and to be able to do its job adequately well, no matter what price point it's aimed at being sold for.

 

[Watchful]

No doubt.
An L bracket is a pretty simple piece of kit.

Anyone wondering how the pricing can vary so much only needs to look at Apple products, and Apple's bank balance.
Lots of people will pay out the wazoo for some shine, some hype, and a brand name.
Cha-Ching ! ! !

People pay for what is called perceived value which in fact has little to nothing to do with actual value. The idea is that if they are charging so much for it, it must be worth it. It isn't usually.
As artists my wife and I saw this in 2006 when the housing market crashed and people stopped buying art in the 1-10,000 dollar range, but the 50,000 and up range never lost a beat, sales never stalled in that area, so the obvious answer was to re-price all our art and we never had to deal with declining sales.

Granted, there is some price premium for the RRS and Kirk gear, but a LOT of what you're paying for is both quality and quality control, in other words not only are the dimension and tolerances going to be a LOT better in the $150 product, they're going to make sure that no 'oopses' leave the factory.

I'll again trot out the story I've posted before of my brothers dabble in 'economy'. He wanted a set of extension tubes, but wasn't quite ready to shell out the $150 for the Kenko tubes, so opted for a $30 MiC set. They looked great, seemed to be reasonably well made, and the first one mounted on to the camera body with zero issue, but... it wouldn't come off. Nope, no way, not a friggin' hope. He wound up spending quite a few dollars at the local repair store (a hacksaw was involved) and now has a nice set of perfectly functioning Kenko tubes and a nice souvenir bill.

A higher price isn't always worth the cost, but more often than not, there's a reason for it.

But if you do get an 'oops' you just return it to Amazon and get another a day later.

 

[tirediron]

...An L-bracket on the other hand? Fairly simple, and a $30 bent piece of metal ought to be able to be machined well enough to fit and to be able to do its job adequately well, no matter what price point it's aimed at being sold for.

A good point is the metal itself. I'll wager that Kirk & RRS are using high quality billets of 6061-T6 or possibly even 7050; the MiC stuff on the other hand is doubtless the cheapest recycled alloy with enough bauxite content to be called aluminum available.

Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying that the cheaper ones won't do the job (and TBH, I'd probably go that route myself), but there are differences, even if they're not readily apparent.

 

[Watchful]

...An L-bracket on the other hand? Fairly simple, and a $30 bent piece of metal ought to be able to be machined well enough to fit and to be able to do its job adequately well, no matter what price point it's aimed at being sold for.

A good point is the metal itself. I'll wager that Kirk & RRS are using high quality billets of 6061-T6 or possibly even 7050; the MiC stuff on the other hand is doubtless the cheapest recycled alloy with enough bauxite content to be called aluminum available.

Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying that the cheaper ones won't do the job (and TBH, I'd probably go that route myself), but there are differences, even if they're not readily apparent.

The differences are not worth the extra cost in my opinion, why do you need something that is built beyond what it's use will ever be? And why would you want to pay for a feature that will never come into play in the way you use it? Sure, you can pay for the most expensive and then send it to a fab shop and have it heavily modified to withstand a nuclear blast, but why?, just to say that you have it?
Heck, just print a sticker and put it on the one you buy and it will look to observers like an expensive one if that matters to you.

I get what you are saying, but do you really need a bracket you can stand on with your 2 kids in your arms if it's just going to hold a camera?

 

[tirediron]

But if you do get an 'oops' you just return it to Amazon and get another a day later.

Good point; and when you're 200 miles out in the Serengeti on that once-in-a-lifetime safari, and your 'L' bracket turns into to 'I' brackets...

 

[Watchful]

But if you do get an 'oops' you just return it to Amazon and get another a day later.

Good point; and when you're 200 miles out in the Serengeti on that once-in-a-lifetime safari, and your 'L' bracket turns into to 'I' brackets...

I'd test it when I got it rather than unwrap it for the first time in the field 200 miles from anything, but that's just my logic speaking.

 

[Derrel]

The Chinese metal procurement specialists at Brackets R Us probably take exception to the way you so dismissively brush off their scrap heaps! Errrr.... I mean their supply heaps...errr, I mean, their carefully racked supplies of low-grade metal stock...

 

[tirediron]

The Chinese metal procurement specialists at Brackets R Us probably take exception to the way you so dismissively brush off their scrap heaps! Errrr.... I mean their supply heaps...errr, I mean, their carefully racked supplies of low-grade metal stock...

Are you referring to People's Machine Works #6, Shanghai?

 

[Derrel]

The Chinese metal procurement specialists at Brackets R Us probably take exception to the way you so dismissively brush off their scrap heaps! Errrr.... I mean their supply heaps...errr, I mean, their carefully racked supplies of low-grade metal stock...

Are you referring to People's Machine Works #6, Shanghai?

I was actually envisioning the fellows that work at Consolidated Retail Assembly Parts Works #'s 1 thru 44.