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Newton Di100FRVG Flash Bracket
Written circa 2002

I reached a point in my photographic life that I felt the need and justification to purchase another flash bracket to supplement the Stroboframe Pro-T already in my kit. I previously owned another Stroboframe, the Quickflip, but was not satisfied with the way it operated and sold it off sometime ago. With the potential for increased wedding photography, the search was on for another tool to help with the elusive goal of perfect flash photography.

In my observations as a photographer and as a guest at various weddings, I have seen other photographers work and seldom do I see them use flash brackets. Most simply work with the flash directly mounted onto the camera. Since I came to understand the benefits of a good flash bracket years ago, I wondered (but not very hard or often) why there were not more wedding pros using them?

Since meeting up with Larry Rotta of Elan Photography and seeing the way he works with his three Canon EOS bodies, I understand a little more of why so many photographers eschew the flash bracket. Larry works with two cameras around his neck for pretty much the whole shoot. He may rotate one out for another loaded with B&W film or for one with a different lens, but two cameras are always around his neck. This is very similar to the way photojournalists work with two cameras most of the time, one with a wide-angle or normal range zoom and the other with a telephoto zoom.

Wearing two cameras around your neck is heavy and after 6-8 hours, will cause a stiff and sore neck and back. The cameras bang against each other and often, with other objects as you hurry from one vantage point to another. Adding two largish flash brackets such as my Pro-T would only add to the bulk and weight and the way the Pro-T is set-up, would require almost double the amount of working room as non-bracketed cameras.

However, the weight and size issue aside, flash brackets have the advantage of offering overhead lighting for portait and landscape oriented shots, whereas going sans bracket means the flash is off to the side. Having the flash overhead, higher than would otherwise be with the camera directly mounted, pushes shadows down further and helps to reduce them when the subjects are close to a wall. A higher flash position also reduces the risk of red-eye in the subjects - for those who do not know why red-eyes occur, it is the light from the flash illuminating the red blood vessels at the back of the eye. The closer the flash is to the lens, the higher the risk of red-eyes, especially in fair skin Caucasians with blue eyes. Obviously, point and shoot cameras with the flash so close to the lens axis are the worse culprits for causing red-eye.

As much as I favour flash brackets, I have to be honest here and admit that I cannot recall with any certainly of ever having red-eye in my subjects when I have shot with my Nikon flashes directly mounted onto my Nikon cameras. Or, for that matter, with my Vivitars or Metz flash with any of my SLRs, whether 35mm or medium format. I have had red-eye with my point and shoot cameras, both film and digital, and when I have used the built-in flash on my predecessor Nikon F50 and F70 cameras.

So, with such limited history of experiencing red-eye with my prime SLRs and external flashes, my main reason for using a flash bracket is to ensure direct overhead lighting for whichever orientation I wish to shoot. And because I have picked up Larry's habit of shooting with two cameras strung around my neck, I wanted a bracket that offered overhead lighting while being as compact as possible.

Image at left is with the flash mounted to the Newton for a landscape mode shot
Image at lower left is with the flash mounted to the Newton for a portrait mode shot - notice that the shadows are consistent no matter which mode
Image at lower right is with the flash directly mounted, oriented for a portrait mode shot - flash is located to the subject's left side, which causes the light to bounce behind the subject and cast a shadow to the subject's right side, creating a black halo effect on that side

The Contenders (I coulda had class, I coulda been a contenda)

Frankly, there were hardly any contenda's that had any class. As mentioned above, my experience is that not too many photographrs actually use flash brackets - not in Vancouver, anyway. As such, the local shops do not exactly have a wide assortment for one to choose from. Stroboframe is fairly widely available but only the simple ones tend to be carried with the more advanced and complex designs needing special order. Newton may be found in one or two shops but again, if looking for something more exotic or custom, special order is the order of the day.

With nothing to really look at for what I desired of a flash bracket, I had to do all of my research over the Internet and frankly, flash bracket reviews are meagre pickings even with billions of web sites out in cyberworld. It's pathetic when my own reviews come up at the top of the search results in Google for Newton and Stroboframe bracket reviews. Is there no one out there who owns one and has a web site to post comments to? Okay, some do and they were helpful but nothing is going to take the place of actual use and experience on your own.

It did not seem that Stroboframe had a product that I deemed satisfactory based upon checking an old brochure and their web site. Going over the Newton site led to some promising designs and in particular the N7200VG appeared to be most of what I was looking for in a new flash bracket.

I had little choice but to take a jaunt to my favorite photo store and order one in at a hefty price of $260 after the government had their way with me and my minimal after-tax income. Fate conspired against me and it took a long, long time before I finally had my hands on the ordered bracket from Newton. By which time, the N7200VG had morphed into the Di100FRVG, which would stand for Digital 100 Flash Rotator Vertical Grip.

I ordered the bracket way back in February and did not receive until late July. Why the delay? First, Amplis Foto, the Canadian distributor screwed up the order and sent me the N7200, which is Newton's plain Jane flash bracket (note the lack of the VG designation) and second, Newton had experienced production difficulties. Since the basic N7200 came in anyway, I tried it out at home overnight and found it completely unusable, as I suspected based upon my initial research before ordering the N7200VG. Actual use just confirmed my assumptions about the N7200 being ergonomically difficult with my F100/MB15. The VG is for vertical grip and is the one to use for cameras with booster/vertical grips.

The N7200 is meant for use with cameras without a vertical or booster grip attached to the camera. The basic design of the bracket is with a base stem that juts out from the tripod socket of the camera. The amount of space and restriction of this base plate jutting out was just all wrong in my hands, hence the need for the N7200VG now Di100FRVG.

	Here we have the Di100FRVG bracket with the Nikon SC17 TTL cord attached via an extra cost option (requirement actually) of the N7036 Nikon Dedicated Cord Holder. You need the N7036 if you do not want the SC17 cord to twist around on top of the bracket itself. Notice the base plate of the bracket and its design, which facilitates mounting and gripping of a vertical/booster grip. The stem on the left side of the bracket in this view, can be extended a modest amount to account for different heights of camera brand models. The stem portion can also be moved forward or backwards of the camera's base plate by a very small amount, perhaps a half-inch of movement.

	Side view of the Di100FRVG attached to the Nikon D100 D-SLR. Things seem fairly promising here for the use of the bracket. However, keep in mind that the lens shown in this image to the left is the rather compact Nikkor 18-35mm, my point will be made more clear further down this review. A frontal view of the bracket is below this image to the lower left. Notice that the SC17 cord must be wrapped around the bracket many times. I do not like the lack of wrap around space and serious use of this bracket would necessitate another expensive modification or purchase of a custom SC17 that has been chopped. Kirk Enterprises as well as Really Right Stuff offer such chopped SC17 cords for a horrifically expensive $90 US, 50% more than a regular SC17 cord in Canada. Note that the flash is not very high above the camera. In fact, it is at the same height as if the flash were directly mounted, but forward of the camera position. This is by purpose due to Robert Newton's belief that one does not need great flash height to avoid red-eye and also for designing brackets to be as compact as possible.


The method in which the Di100FRVG rotates the flash is quite ingenious and kudos to Robert Newton for an effective design. You can see how the flash rotates in the shot above. One just pushes the flash over to the right when shooting a portrait oriented shot. The tension is adjustable via a small Allen key. That's another good point about Newton brackets, they use Allen key screws that allow for good torquing unlike the unfortuntately ubiquitous and nearly useless Phillips screws and the slightly less useless flat head. When will the world get wise to the superior Canadian-invented Robertson screws.

	This is the flash when oriented on its side and as you can see, pretty much the same as when the flash is oriented on top. The key benefit of the flash bracket is to align the flash directly over top of the lens for consistent subject illumination no matter for portraits or landscapes.
	Comparison of the Newton Di100FRVG on the right and the Stroboframe Pro-T on the left. The Pro-T has been set-up so that the flash is directly overhead of the lens no matter which mode I shoot with. Due to the design of the Pro-T, for proper orientation, the flash head must be kept quite high above the camera, about 12 inches from the middle of the lens to the middle of the flash. This height works well to push shadows down but is awkward when the camera is on the shoulder as a second camera. The weight of the flash throws the whole unit downwards and out so that it sticks out to the side nearly a foot and half. The flip portion of the Pro-T will also flip out when carried on the shoulder and one moves around at a quick pace. For all of these reasons, I decided against another Pro-T or the smaller Press T model for something much more compact.

With all the nit picky quirks of the Stroboframe Pro-T, it soon became apparent that it holds one major advantage over the Newton Di100FRVG, no centre piece sticking out from the camera/booster grip's tripod socket, as seen above. At first glance, the Newton on the right appears to have enough room for the hand to wrap around the lens but in actual use, this centre piece was uncomfortable and forced me to alter the way I would normally hold the camera and lens. It was manageable with smaller lenses but with a larger lens such as the 80-200mm f2.8 seen above, the centre piece was quite a bother.

	The lack of good height extension of the Newton bracket also meant that use of the 80-200mm lens had to be pretty precise in terms of how the non-removable tripod bracket had to be oriented. The release knob for the tripod bracket would rub against the bracket when I oriented the tripod bracket for a comfortable hand holding position. The bracket is already at its maximum height extension in this shot.
	In this shot, you can see how I would normally place my left hand for holding the 80-200mm lens. Moving the tripod bracket down further means an uncomfortable handholding placement.
	The other side of the bracket does not offer any respite from the space problems. the fingers of my left hand are crammed in tight against the stem of the bracket.
	In this shot, you can see that there is not a lot of space from the bracket's centre piece to the back of my left hand. If this was a single focal length lens, this lack of space would not be as much of a concern but...
	...this is not a single focal length and one must zoom on many occasions and this necessitates moving the left hand in a manner that rubs against the centre piece and causes annoyance and irritation for me.

I used the bracket for a wedding rehearsal to try it out and it was "not" too bad but only because I used smaller lenses such as the 18-35mm and 35-70mm lens. The 35-70mm being a push-pull design alleviated some of the problems with the bracket and I was almost wishing for my former push-pull 80-200mm f2.8 lens for easier use with the Di100FRVG. Although not bad in actual use, I still found it annoying enough to eschew its use and went with one F100 mounted to the Stroboframe Pro-T and another with the SB28 flash directly mounted for the actual wedding shoot.

Other annoyances for me:

the four-month wait before finally receiving the bracket, despite pre-paying for it - in fairness to Newton, this was due to a third party contractor for Newton screwing up the order for the Di100FRVG's base plate. This left Robert Newton many months behind schedule for delivery of the FRVG brackets and to his credit, once I contacted him directly about the delay, Robert Newton worked on the base plate himself in order to get a complete bracket to me as quickly as possible
after the personal touch from Robert Newton, I'm going to come across as an ungrateful bastard with this next comment, but the bracket I received looked like second-hand goods. I own another Newton bracket, the N7400 for my Bronica SQ-Ai, and I have been pleased with this bracket and was a major reason why I looked to Newton again to fill my needs for another flash bracket. The N7400 I bought is as industrial in look and design as any other Newton bracket but it came with a near flawless finish whereas the Di100FRVG I received had nicks and marks all over it. It was also somewhat dirty and came straight in the cardboard box without the bubble wrap that normally acompanies brand new Newton brackets
finish aside, this is minor compared to how the bracket works for me and unfortunately, I paid an expensive lesson in discovering the Di100FRVG is not the product I had hoped it would be

I once envisioned having two cameras with the Di100FRVG brackets for covering a wedding, but frankly, I would prefer to just go with the flashes directly mounted on the cameras instead. Best case scenario would be to use the Newton bracket strictly with small lenses because it is not a great design with my 80-200mm zoom lens. If I were to do it over again, I would go with another Stroboframe, this time a compact Press T instead of the Newton. As mentioned above, the Stroboframe is far from perfect but its major advantage in having the flash column rise from the side of the camera and not via a centre piece, puts it far ahead of the Newton for ergonomic use.

The Newton is not far off in being a great design, but it mean Newton would have to redesign his bracket's base plate and work on a design similar to Stroboframe's. For me, that would be the ideal bracket, the Stroboframe base plate and column with Newton's flash rotating design, but not likely to happen anytime soon.

Please keep in mind that these comments about the bracket are based upon my personal requirements and equipment and your mileage may vary. I do not enjoy providing negative comments about a product and if you have an interest in this product, it would be ideal for you to try before you buy.

Link to Newton Brackets

Link to the Saunders Group of Companies, owners of Stroboframe

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