Quick-release intermediate mounting plates?

Robert Coe writes:

On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:49:31 -0500, Neil Ellwood
wrote:
: With tripod/camera mounting plates it is usual to buy one for each camera
: you are going to use so that you can change cameras on the tripod easily
: and quickly.

And those puppies cost $22 each, even at B&H. Oh, well, I guess nobody said
photography would be cheap. :^|

Or the Really Right Stuff L-bracket for my D700 cost $140. Definitely
not cheap! (Then the replacement foot for the 70-200 cost $100.)

Ryan McGinnis writes:

On Fri, 7 Oct 2011, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

Robert Coe writes:

On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:49:31 -0500, Neil Ellwood
wrote:
: With tripod/camera mounting plates it is usual to buy one for each camera
: you are going to use so that you can change cameras on the tripod easily
: and quickly.

And those puppies cost $22 each, even at B&H. Oh, well, I guess nobody said
photography would be cheap. :^|

Or the Really Right Stuff L-bracket for my D700 cost $140. Definitely
not cheap! (Then the replacement foot for the 70-200 cost $100.)

Yeah, but lets be honest -- $22 is pretty cheap for such a great and
useful piece of equipment. I'm sure it's crazy high-margin -- but
when you think that a decent tripod, head, and set of quick release
plates can be purchased for under $500 and will likely last you more
than a decade, without going obsolete, that's some great value.

I upgraded the head on my old Bogen tripod from their big clums not very
stron ball head (the 168 I think) to the RRS RH-40, with lever clamp,
and put a lever clamp on my monopod too, and got the l-bracket, and the
foot. A simple little tripod upgrade, to a tripod that cost "a lot"
back when at about $225 I think, ran me $896 or some such. Pardon my
sticker shock; one of the problems of living through 50 years of
inflation.

Some day I may replace the legs as well; shudder.