Poll, survey, (Low cost Arca style plates.)

I am not here intending to bash or promote. I realize this is a sales driven forum on the Net for Togs to share & learn.

First off, I own & use quite a few L plates from Kirk & RRS. I also have a custom lens collar, & several/many same name brand, camera & lens plates.

Here's the tricky part. I have had no issues so far with "No Name" ultra low expensive, flat plates. I even purchased a cheap D4 L Plate & works fine. (Though I did have to do about an hour's worth of machining, mod for the strap lug to fit correctly.) That is one hard piece of aluminum.

I have a 70, 90 100 & 120mm, & more, no name Arca Style Camera Bottom, or Lens Foot Plates.

Has anyone had one crack in the clamp or break off in plate's the mounting screw area?

A $15. plate on a $1500 lens' foot tends to make me feel a bit giddy.

All feedback is welcome. Thank you, in advance,

Semi-irrelevant reply: I bought an universal and another M9 specific Arca L-plate for dirt cheap. - I don't own any Arca heads yet. And no, I of course didn't have issues with my plates yet besides screws supposed to hold the M9 specific one together shouting for Loctite &/or re-tightening.

A $15. plate on a $1500 lens' foot tends to make me feel a bit giddy.

Suggestion: cut a 1/4" threaded hole into some old pipe, length of train track, whatever you might have laying around, bolt the plate on it and give it some brute force stress testing, at least if you can use a non-original screw that you won't use with your photo gear later. Overstretching the one that comes with the plates by applying a lot of leverage can't be healthy.

What I can tell: Everything else in the photo world might be way weaker than our cheapo Arca plates. - I used to have a motordrive on my Pentax Super A. Over time it pulled the tripod thread out of the base plate and bend that plate enough for the contact pins of the MD to no longer reach their counterparts. Leica M base plates look quite fishy too.

Have you pondered finding your peace with some safety rope between tripod collar and center column? - Maybe not ideal but probably better than the lens dropping on a concrete floor.

A $15 plate "improved" using a $20K knee and ram mill - perfect! Aluminum is not hard, it's "chewy" tough, which causes the tool to grab and tear the surface. You need the right tooling to do a good job without gouging the surface.

The greater problem is achieving the right fit between clamp and plate. As you have probably found, it's difficult to measure the effective width between bevels. The best way is to use ground rods of known diameter in the grooves. The simplest way is to test it in the clamp you intend to use.

RRS plates for digital M's get around the weak tripod socket issue by replacing the entire base plate with one CNC machined from aluminum.

Unlike steel, aluminum will eventually crack and fail under repeated strain well under the elastic limit. This tendency is mitigated by using thicker sections, and removing stress concentrators, coupled with frequent and thorough inspections. The effect is fairly predictable, which is why aircraft continue to fly. In the case of a camera plate, it won't occur in your lifetime, given due diligence to the machining process. The lens foot itself is more likely to fail, being a casting and such.

A $15. plate on a $1500 lens' foot tends to make me feel a bit giddy.

- How much do you think it should cost for a few square inches of CNC machined dural?

Is the lesser-cost plate really "cheap"? Or the RRS / Kirk plate well overpriced?

Most of my RRS plates were bought used from "table sales" at the local camera store, where the going rate is usually $5 or $10.

Even though I have a few that are properly matched to the camera they're made for, I also have a lot of "fitted" plates that aren't on the camera they're designed to fit. The plates on my D800 and F100 are that way. Honestly, I just use them without even thinking about them-once I sorted and found a reasonable match, I tightened the screw and the plates fit flush, keep the camera from turning, and don't have any overhang that causes problems. They have 95% of the fit of the "correct" RRS plate on my D600 and a few other cameras. On my F100, the curve on the lip doesn't quite match the curve on the bottom/back of the camera(as it would on a perfectly fitted plate), but the camera still fits flat on the plate and the lip serves its intended function.

I should mention that these are standard bottom-only plates. I don't use L brackets, where I suspect getting one actually made for the camera is a lot more important.

I also have a bunch of $15 generic one size fits all plates, and honestly I never worry about the security of my cameras on them. They regularly get used on my Hasselblad, F4s, and plenty of mechanical 35mm SLRs where the need for a "fitted" plate is a lot less. My two biggest complaints about them are that they sit taller than an RRS plate(meaning that I tend to take them off rather than leaving them on all the time) and the rubber on them doesn't do as good of a job of preventing rotation as a lip. I could probably at least do something about both problems with some time on he mill, but as Ed mentions aluminum isn't exactly the easiest material to machine. I've been busy enough at work lately that I haven't had the "down time" to do machine shop work that I really need for work-related stuff, much less personal stuff, and I haven't been inclined to stay late or come in early to do it either. If I could find the time and motivation, I suspect it would be fairly straight forward(if a bit tedious) to at least trim a generic plate to hold something like an F2 or really any basic mechanical SLR...although an F2 would be my design goal.

That reminds me-I need to do order some fresh cutting tools. I had one good end mill that I use to use on aluminum...I learned a long time ago not to keep my good drill bits, specialty taps, and stuff like cutters in the machine shop but rather to keep them in my office...but I loaned my preferred aluminum bit out to someone without thinking to ask what they were going to do with it and then a few minutes later looked in the shop to see them trying to cut grooves in a slab of 316L stainless...

- How much do you think it should cost for a few square inches of CNC machined dural?

There's about $1200 of steel, plastic and fabric in a new automobile. How much did you pay for your last car? An attorney puts nothing but time into his work products. How much does that cost his client? Ever try to take your own popcorn into a movie theater?

You can buy a Bridgeport in fairly good condition for about $15K, then put $40K into basic tooling and fixtures. Someone has to pay for that, plus the expertise needed to operate it, shipping, handling and working space. There are places where profit is a dirty word, but don't plan on getting what you need without a long wait and friends in high places.