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

ChromLives Camera L Bracket Mount Video Grip.

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.

It’s vaguely L-shaped but perhaps more of a letter C, and has more to do with handheld shooting than the effective use of a tripod. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

ChromLives Camera L Bracket: Specifications

Base length	11cm / 4.33in
Base width	2.5cm / 1in
Vertical aspect	19cm / 7.48in
Shoe compatibility	1/4in screw
Weight	0.2kg / 7.1oz

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.

Instead of being designed to mount to a tripod, this L-bracket is geared up to be a handheld device. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

There’s no quick-release plate for tripod-mounting, the long section at the base screws directly to your camera. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

There are two cold shoes, which are solid metal affairs. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

If you feel that two is twice as good as one, you’ll be pleased with the dual cold shoe arrangement. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

As well as the cold shoes, there are two 1/4in threaded holes in the bracket, one in the bottom plate, the other shown here between the two cold shoes, with the additionally supplied thumbscrew. You can use this to attach other accessories, like microphone or mobile phone mount. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

The angled grip section of the bracket feels comfortable in use, whether you’re shooting in landscape or portrait orientation mode. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

The top cold shoe places the flash or other accessory directly above the camera when you’re shooting in landscape orientation. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

A drawback for using the side cold shoe for flash is that the rectangular shape of the flashgun is at 90 degrees to the image frame of the camera. (Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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.

Features ★★★★	The main ‘features’ consist of a camera plate, hand grip and two cold shoes, plus additional mounting sockets.
Design ★★★	It’s a decent enough design and well made, boiling down to a strip of aluminum with some bends in it and a couple of extras.
Performance ★★★	It works well for its intended purpose but that purpose is ultimately quite basic.
Value ★★★★★	There are very few camera accessories you can buy for this sort of money and it’s great value for what it is.

(Image credit: Matthew Richards)

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