Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

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I love 1/4-20 sockets. Attach my camera to a flash bracket? Yep. Attach an eyebolt to attach a carabiner to attach a neck strap? Yep. Attach a hand strap or a 40mm, 80mm, or 200mm Arca Swiss plate. Yep. Yep, Yep and Yep.

There's nothing stopping a photographer from permanently attaching an Arca-Swiss plate to the bottom of a camera body with a bit of cyanoacrylate or some screws if it makes better photographs. For me, walking around with an Arca-Swiss plate on my camera made me appreciate that 1/4-20 socket is flush. Walking around with a 120mm plate made me appreciate that the 1/4-20 socket is flush both top to bottom and front to back.

Like everything in photography 1/4-20 and Arca-Swiss are defined by engineering tradeoffs. The cost of slower direct attachment of 1/4-20 is in exchange for the physical strength of bolted connection and the flexibility adopting a broader standard affords - I can build a camera mount from general components available at the hardware store (including round stock and a 1/4-20 die in a statistically unlikely universe).

edit: I left out all the electronic/software rants because photography is undergoing Cambrian explosion in regards to controls and computation (but mirrorless cameras are nothing new).

The only thing wrong with the 1/4-20 mount is that there's only one. Camera manufacturers should add a second one half an inch to the side so that plates can be mounted with two points of attachment, which would eliminate concerns with twisting and loosening.

Wanting to force the weight and cost of Arca Swiss on everyone is just selfish. In fact most of these complaints are just examples of wanting everyone else to subsidize features they might not need that this guy happens to want.

The Qi demand on the other hand is just dumb. Wireless charging requires close proximity, so you'd have to set your camera down just so or it would fail to charge. With different lenses changing the balance point and accessories like portrait grips changing the shape, many people would never get Qi to work properly. Plus in a world where enthusiasts largely have multiple batteries anyway, wireless charging built into the camera seems utterly useless. I'd rather rapidly charge my battery in a dedicated charger than leave my camera on its own charging pad all the time.

Some QR plates have set screws that can be tightened down to reduce twisting. For example, you can see them in https://uniquephoto.azureedge.net/resources/uniquephoto/imag...

These positions line up with some locations on various medium and large format cameras (where there is a lot of weight in play).

That's a pretty good idea, especially if the camera body has indentations that the set screw can really bite into. A second screw socket in the camera body would be better, though. It would be 100% backward compatible and solve the issue completely.

If you look at a Pentax 7 bottom plate, http://forum.mflenses.com/userpix/271_PENTAX67BOTTOM_1.jpg you can see that additional screw location. I am certain one of the holes in the hex plate matches it.

Good for Pentax for actually solving this issue. :)

For some applications, Velcro on the bottom of the camera and top of the accessory might mitigate twisting. I've also read about people using compressible materials to increase friction. For what it's worth, there's nothing preventing modifying a camera to add a second screw.

Drilling into the body of a camera that costs multiple thousand dollars to add a second screw seems like a risky maneuver and definitely warranty-voiding. I would personally advise against this.

Adding Velcro doesn't seem to me like it would do much for vibration or slippage (large rotation, yes, small scale rotation, not so much), since Velcro is not a rigid connection. Rubber or similar spacers can help but it's still not great. I use a plate that's got a lip on it to prevent twisting (which was a happy accident, because I actually ordered the wrong plate).

To me, the degree to which a camera is likely to see a built in Arca Swiss plate is inversely proportional to the degree to which it costs multiple thousands of dollars because the higher the price the more modular the design. The reason for more modular designs is that the variety of systems with which high end cameras are designed to integrate tends to be higher. Or conversely the more likely the camera is to be designed to lock the photographer into a proprietary systems sold by the camera manufacturer.

In terms of adding a second screw, a multiple thousand dollar camera body is probably not the ideal first subject for a person who has never disassembled a camera or done similarly fine grained work. Such a person should perhaps hire a technician or practice on broken equipment first in cases where such modifications seem worth the effort/cost. Hoping camera manufacturers would design around the edge case is not much of a plan.

I think the inverse proportionality is probably wrong since entry-level cameras generally never get mounted on anything. Arca Swiss mounting on my mom's camera wouldn't be particularly useful.

I don't think a multiple-thousand dollar camera body is a good target for invasive modifications unless it's already out of warranty, regardless of whether the change is being made by someone with the appropriate skills. I also doubt that the result of such a modification would be very good anyway. Without being part of the initial design (e.g. a captive nut embedded in the base), the best aftermarket modification would likely be based on either threads tapped directly into the body or a nut essentially glued in place.

I'm a pretty avid DIYer with a lot of tools, taps, dies, vises, etc.

I would not feel comfortable either 1) drilling into the bottom of my DSLR, or 2) taking it apart to see if I could safely drill into a given spot.

I would say there's quite a lot preventing me from modifying it, and even more to prevent normal users.

I mentioned cyanoacrylate for those reasons -- although other adhesives might be better, it seemed like a place to start. Anyway, one of the themes of my comment was that if it's a problem there are alternatives to hoping the camera manufacturers will address what is mostly an edge case that can be mitigated with attention to detail during the selection of accessories and their use in the field. I mean after a while, experience will lead to checking if the plate has become twisted before operating the shutter. It might take years for someone to recognize the problem and gain that habit and most people with cameras probably will never even experience it as a problem because it never is for them...because most people don't use a tripod most of the time.

Unless you're taking serious action shots on a violently shaking platform, even a hand tight 1/4-20 isn't going to shake or blow loose. Is loosening a theoretical or actual problem?

Depending on what you're mounting the camera on, it can be a real problem. A moderately-heavy lens attached to a tripod head turned 90 degrees for a portrait can definitely put enough torque on the screw to loosen it. This is most likely just going to be an annoyance, though, because the camera will droop but won't actually come loose. On the other hand, if you're using a "rapid" bottom-mounted camera strap, the possibility of the screw backing out and dumping your camera on the ground is very real.

e.g. https://www.photo.net/discuss/threads/black-rapid-and-other-...

"I definitly have had issues with the tripod socket mount coming loose during carry. It is rare, and usually only after a very long time of not adjusting it but I came within a wisker of dumping my F5 one time and the D300 has seen it loosen up a couple times."

I'll second this, and note that this is a problem more significant in practice than in theory.

Speaking as a physically inept "software and pure maths" person with consequently no authority whatsoever on this matter, I believe this is mostly on account of the usual "thumb-screw and rubbery no-slip pad" construction of typical non-camera-specific mounting hardware: while it's hard to imagine any lens without its own tripod mount is capable of enough torque to loosen even a hand-tightened bolt, as soon as the non-slip pad ceases to be effectively rigid, very little torque is required to loosen the bolt. And as with most (all?) "rubbery" materials, stiffness of a given non-slip pad at constant compression is a function of temperature.

I think it has more impact on very long exposure shots that can span 30 minutes to hours where a breeze can ruin a shot of it moves in the slightest.

But I agree. I think for the majority of shots it doesn't make that much difference.

I think you're missing the point. If camera manufacturers just molded an Arca Swiss dovetail into the bottom edge of their cameras, then you could have both solid, easy QR compability and the 1/4 socket--simultaneously.

The way it works now, you have to use the 1/4 socket to get QR compatibility.

When I use my flash bracket, I bolt the flash bracket to the camera. When I use the camera with flash bracket with my tripod, I bolt an Arca Swiss compatible plate to the flash bracket using another 1/4-20 hole in the bracket. A third 1/4-20 hole allows me to leave the $0.75 1/4-20 eyebolt (stainless steel no less) I use for a carabiner + neck strap on the flash bracket.

That said, from an engineering perspective the long term durability of a plastic molded dovetail when clamped in a metal Arca Swiss clamp might be a challenge because the Arca Swiss system is not designed around that degree of dissimilarity of material hardness (not that I have anything against plastic). One of the characteristics of Arca Swiss connections is that they are not based on a formal standard and this leads to minor dimensional variability among components that is mitigated by clamping the clamp tighter or buying components from a company like Arca-Swiss at the prices their products command.

Potential durability aside, a molded in dovetail would increase the bulk of a camera and generally the trend seems to be away from camera bulk all things being equal. While a molded in adapter might increase stability in some cases, in others it would decrease it. Setting a camera on a table is an obvious case. Any other mounting is also going to be through a longer lever arm and with a higher center of gravity.

The QR dovetail would be metal. Most high end cameras have metal shells on the bottom, and that's really what Thom is writing about: high end cameras.

EDIT: and it would not stick out awkwardly on the bottom. It would be engineered as part of the shape of the camera itself, while keeping a flat bottom that sits level, with the 1/4 threaded socket.

I'd prefer dual 1/4 threads on the bottom of the camera, then you could add the Arca Swiss dovetail and it wouldn't have the rotation issues. Also, the aesthetics and feel of the camera body wouldn't change.

A dovetail would change the way a camera feels in-hand. For all the non-Arca-Swiss users, a dovetail would forever be caught on things without adding utility.

It doesn't have to stick out - think two ridges on the underside, but the whole bottom is still flat.

I wish the author had explained this better. It seems obvious now but initially I was having the same confusion as some of the ancestor comments.

Exactly.

It's like the old phone jack that Apple wants to be rid of--a common and cheap standard that attaches to every known thing in the universe already. And replace it with what? A proprietary system that may be better in some ways, but reduces your choices. Now, I also use the Bogen hex pads--which means if I am out with my Nikon, or my Hasselblad, or my Fuji 6x9, or even my Wista VX, I am good to go.

Comparing the 1/4"-20 tripod mount to the 1/8" TRRS jack isn't a great comparison.

The tripod mount has been a standard for decades and decades.

The phone headphone jack fractured into competing standards years ago. Works fine for listening, but once you want to use a microphone you're dealing with different pinouts for different manufacturers, balkanized auto detection and signaling, incompatible plugs sizing, grounding issues with the phone case, etc. It wasn't a pristine situation when Apple left it behind.

>once you want to use a microphone you're dealing with different pinouts

This is true, but ultimately they are all variations on the 1/4" phone plug, which has been a standard across multiple industries since the advent of the telephone. Adding another ring to a TRS, or changing the pinout, is a minor variation compared to Apple's alternative. The phone plug is so ubiquitous that I think the comparison is valid.

It is a good comparison to make with TRS connectors, which got hit in the crossfire. It's been a standard for decades and decades. As you say, it works perfectly for listening. And for those of us that don't want remote controls or microphones on our headphones, the connector is an unfortunate casualty of "progress".

Vote with your wallet.

My next phone will also have a headphone socket.

No kidding on standard components. When we have family gatherings and want to take a self timer group shot and I don't have a tripod, the shade attachment screw at the top of a lamp usually fits into my camera's tripod socket. The shade mount is sturdy enough to hold A small camera in place while also allowing enough pivoting and turning to frame up the shot.

Update: clearly I am not the only person to notice this: https://books.google.com/books?id=nRsTBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA57&ots=...

Wow, that is brilliant. I never thought of using a lamp like that.

I absolutely agree... While Arca-swiss is ok, having this as "the #1 dumb thing camera companies do" really made me lose confidence in this article. I mean, seriously - it is the one thing that remains compatible with every single camera in the whole world made for the last 80 years...

As a Bogen hex plate user, I would be aghast at having an Arca Swiss mount on the bottom of my camera.

Furthermore, a permanent Arca Swiss would prevent innovative designs such as the Really Right Stuff L brackets (which would be my choice if I were to ever switch QR plate systems).

Furthermore, many QR plates are protected by patent. Having the classic screw isn’t.

Another thing with the 1/4" socket is that it's so easy to whip something up real quick to attach the camera to whatever. It could literally be as simple as pulling a hex bolt out of a box and tightening it in.

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