I love how so much cool photo gear comes out of my home town (think Lensbabies.)

It's a common misunderstanding that camera mounts are the same as a typical 1/4" hardware store bolt. This isn't the case; at-least it's not supposed to be, sometimes now days it is.

The little stud or threaded hole you find on your camera equipment uses a British Standard Whitworth thread standard, not the American Unified Coarse standard.

The BSW standard uses a 55deg thread angle and the AUC uses a 60deg thread profile. Both the BSW and AUC standards for 1/4" uses 20 threads per inch.

They're very close, but that 5deg difference can cause problems. Although a standard hardware store bolt will usually screw into your equipment, it's doing subtle damage to the female threads when it does and forcing them to become AUC threads in a way. The hard steel bolt will chew out the often soft aluminum threaded hole. If conditions are right the mating surfaces will gall and fuse and the parts will become stuck together. You'll be able to force them apart but this will cause more damage to the threads.

The best advice I have is buy and 1/4 AUC tap and a matching die and chase the threads on your gear so they all match the 1/4 AUC profile rather than the BSW. This is because BSW taps and dies are harder to find, and some gear, especially from china (oddly) is shipping with AUC threads.

Old timers will remember gear twisting together with no force, those were the days before mismatches.

Of course the caveat to the advice is if you have NICE equipment that you don't want to mangle into being something it's not, then buy the BSW taps and dies off the Internet and fix the AUC threads.

I can see this getting a lot of use by a lot of people. Though expensive, we can hope prices comes down once scale is ramped up; not to mention it is an American made product and that is something to note when considering the price of an item.

Dave, great call on the thread size issue. I had just last night watched a review of a product for lighting that was a cheap ebay product and the threads of the reviewer's lug had the same issue. Now there is a reason. Thanks

Eric

Udi:

This is Matt Monroe (A/K/A: Mister Nasty Clamps) giving a shout.... Thanks so much for the great review of the clamps and your feedback about some future versions/modifications that might be in order. You were one of the first people to promote my early prototype (i.e.: the CIA), and your comments about my second run of prototypes certainly helped to influenced the current design.

I did want to give a bit of a feedback to folks who've commented that the cost of the Nasty Clamps is a bit too high. Indeed, were the clamps a product that I had manufactured overseas in China, the chances are good that I could get the retail price down to somewhere between $19.99 and $24.99. On the other hand -- in sending the clamps overseas for manufacture -- the overall build quality would suffer quite a bit and (more importantly) the working life span of the clamps would drop dramatically. By building the clamps at home (literally), I get to use very high quality parts, local power coating facilities, and Portland (Oregon) based molding and machining companies to manufacture the plastics. I also get to make a high-quality product that should last for a good long time in the ol' kit bag.

My retail price of $49 includes shipping and handling (within the United States), and the time costs of packaging, labeling, invoicing, and physical shipping are worked into the overall costs of the clamps. These times costs are not insignificant (as anyone who's ever handled fulfillment can tell you), and -- personally -- I think that a price of $49 in the United States (with shipping and handling included) is actually a pretty good deal.

I certainly welcome feedback about the clamps, and I invite those who are tempted to dip their toes into the world of Nasty products to at least try out one clamp. I can guarantee that you'll find all sorts of not-so-nasty uses for them, and that they'll become a valuable addition to your grip and lighting kit.

Matt

Nice post.... thanks for the information sharing..