19Sep A touch hipster, Wood Panasonic LX100 Grip from J.B. Design
Above is a bag from J.B. Camera Design. They make “hand crafted” wooden base plates and handles for small cameras. While that sort of thing is usually something I poke fun at, my recent purchase of a Panasonic LX100 has forced me to start looking at that sort of thing. Other than hand crafted wood handles, there aren’t a lot of rig options for such small cameras.
The main reason I was looking for some kind of rig for the LX100 is to shift the QR plate away from the battery door. With a QR plate placed in the standard location, you have to unscrew the plate anytime you need to get to the battery or change SD cards. With the J.B. Camera Design grip attached, the 1/4 20 threads are shifted over to the center of the lens. This gives you room to open the battery door and centers the lens under the QR plate.
Build quality is what you would expect out of a milled piece of bamboo. Nice and solid across the board with an IKEA style 1/4 20 mount embedded in the base. There are cutout outs for both the battery door and speaker and the lip around the edge of the frame is a nice snug fit around the Panasonic LX100 base.
Looking the J.B. Camera Design grip from the bottom, you can see the nice metal 1/4 20 mount as well as an etched logo. They’ve done a good job milling the unit and all of the edges are nice and smooth.
Included in the J.B. Camera Design grip packaging is an extra 1/4 20 screw and a worn out old penny. Kind of a classy move for a package that already screams hipster. Can’t be bothered with a flat head screwdriver, here’s a penny kid.
While the J.B. Camera Design grip isn’t normally the sort of thing I would spend much time writing about, there aren’t really a lot of options out there for the Panasonic LX100. $85 is a bit on the spendy side when it comes to a$700 camera body and I would have prefered machined aluminium, but the grip looks fine and it solves a problem.
I’m currently working on a quick video guide that explains how to best setup and use the Panasonic LX100 for 4k shooting. More on that to follow in coming posts.
