ChromLives Camera L Bracket Mount Video Grip review: it’s an L-bracket Jim, but not as we know it

ChromLives might be a name you’ve never heard of but it crops up on Amazon in many countries around the world. It’s a Chinese manufacturer of camera brackets and grips, phone mounts, articulated boom arms, lens cap straps and more besides. The item I’m reviewing here aims to be among the best L-brackets and is certainly one of the cheapest, but probably isn’t what you’re expecting.

ChromLives Camera L Bracket: Specifications

ChromLives Camera L Bracket: Price

I’ve recently reviewed the 3 Legged Thing Zelda QD, a dedicated L-bracket for various Nikon cameras. It’s typically L-shaped and very well presented, with an asking price of $100 / £90 / AU$210, which is entirely reasonable. The ChromLives bracket is a more or less L-shaped piece of metal with some add-ons but only costs $12 / £12 / AU$45. Bargain? Let’s see.

ChromLives Camera L Bracket: Design & Handling

I thought I knew all about L-brackets for cameras, having reviewed a number of competing dedicated and universal examples of the breed. The premise is always the same. It’s an L-shaped bracket that fits to your camera with the long side along the bottom and the short side up the vertical. Arguably more of an L lying on its side. The idea is that you can quickly and easily take the bracket off your tripod head, rotate it through 90 degrees, and pop it back on again.

The main advantage is that the center of gravity remains, well, ‘centered’ for portrait as well as landscape orientation shooting. Further bonuses are that the position of the lens remains unchanged when switching between landscape and portrait orientation, and if you like portrait mode shooting with the shutter button at the top, you don’t risk the camera coming unscrewed on its mounting plate. None of that is what this L-bracket is all about.

For starters, you can leave your tripod at home. The ChromLives L-bracket is built around a sculpted hand grip which is comfortably grippy. It’s a bracket that serves as a handholding tool for shooting stills and is perhaps even more suitable for shooting video.

The bottom section (at least if you’re shooting in landscape orientation) is quite long and features a slot that runs almost its entire length. Through the slot fits a standard 1/4in locking screw that connects directly with the tripod mounting socket of your camera. So instead of having the likes of an Arca Swiss plate for mounting the bracket on a tripod, you attach the camera to the bracket and hold it in your hand by its rubber grip.

The shape of the bracket is less of a classic L shape, more a series of angles at about 45-degree intervals that see you through four stages to a total of 180 degrees. The first turn transitions from the base to the rubberized grip. The second steps up to the first of two cold shoes. I’m particularly impressed with these. Following the aluminum theme set by the main bracket itself, the cold shoes have a robust metal build, complete with a clamping mechanism and locking screw. Suffice it to say I’d trust them with an expensive flashgun or other accessory.

The two cold shoes are set at 90-degree angles to each other. One is at right angles to the camera, the other is directly above it. This gives the versatility of fitting, say, a flashgun or LED lamp so that it’s significantly higher but on the same axis as your camera, the other enables the light to be positioned directly above the camera if you’re shooting in portrait orientation. It’s a neat way of achieving off-camera flash (or other lighting) without having to hold two different bits of kit, one in each hand.

ChromLives Camera L Bracket: Performance

The rubberized hand grip of the aluminum bracket feels comfortable, and the long rubberized bottom plate fits securely to your camera. The result is that the clamp feels solid and reliable when you’re using it for handheld shooting.

For when you’d like additional height between the camera and flashgun, for example to minimize the risk of red-eye, you can use the top cold shoe, as shown below. However, you’re likely to need a remote trigger or flash able if your camera and flashgun don’t support standalone remote flash triggering.

In the example image below, I’ve attached my flashgun to the side cold shoe instead. You can still use this configuration in landscape orientation shooting, if you want to fire light in from the side rather than from above. Alternatively, if you rotate your camera for portrait orientation shooting, the flash will be directly above.

ChromLives Camera L Bracket: Verdict

With it being so cheap to buy, the only real questions regarding the ChromLives Camera L Bracket Mount Video Grip are whether it’s any good or not, and whether it’s actually useful. It’s actually quite nicely made using aluminum for the main bracket, a rubberized grip and very sturdy cold shoes. So yes, it is actually rather good and works well. Whether you’d actually feel the need to use it or not is a question that only you can answer. It’s going in my drawer of random bits of camera kit for the time being, and I can’t imagine I’ll be getting out again any time soon.

Alternatives

The 3 Legged Thing Lexie is a universal L-bracket, so you can adjust it to fit pretty much any camera. It lacks the tailor-made design credentials of dedicated L-brackets but can be a useful option if your camera isn’t supported, or if you have multiple cameras and want to be able to use a single L-bracket with all of them.

The NiSi Wizard Camera Bracket is like an L-bracket, but different. Rather than following the typical right-angle theme, it has a circular rotational mechanism that enables you to shoot at any angle, like using a tripod mounting collar for a big lens. It’s a neat solution but isn’t universally compatible with all cameras and lenses.