I was catching up on the Frugal Film Maker blog and came across Scott’s post about the $12 Sima QR plate. I knew I’d picked up an all metal QR plate for less then that in the past so I started going through my old buy it now e-mails from ebay. Sure enough I found this , total price $8.49.

I bought 3 of these as a simple quick release for my field recorders, but when they showed up I found one glaring problem. If you look closely in the center of the base (right), you’ll notice that there aren’t any threads in the mounting hole.

The only way to mount this guy is to use a tapered head 1/4 20 screw, but there’s another problem. If you look on the far right you’ll notice that the screw that connects the release arm sticks out above the rest of the mounting area. You end up needing at least a 1/4 inch of clearance in order to mount this properly. In this case I printed out a spacer (on the left) to solve the problem.

You could probably use washers to get the clearance you need. Or you might not need them at all if the  can be mounted on the edge of the rig. The adapter is very solid and the price is right, but make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into with this quick release plate. The other option might be to drill a hole and use a tap to add threads to the bottom of the QR plate, but you’ll still need a spacer.

The generic Manfrotto 323 quick release plate can be found on Ebay for between , and Amazon for $10.63 here. If you try it out and come up with a better way to mount this let me know.


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