Polaroid Heavy Duty L Shaped Bracket With Ball Head

I was looking for a flash bracket with a flexible mount capable of holding my flash at angles for macro photography. The Novoflex Flash Bracket with Padded Grip, Strap and Ball Head. is nice, but the price is very steep for a non-professional like me. Then I found this on Amazon. There were no reviews, but for thirteen bucks I thought it was worth a gamble.

I mounted my SB-600 to the ball head using a ePhoto SB800 Shoe mount Flash Adapter with 1/4-20 Thread and now I have a pretty nice and flexible arrangement for off-camera flash. This bracket does have a tripod mount in the bottom which I found other inexpensive brackets don't, and this is a must for me.

However, there are a couple negatives I found that keep me from giving this five stars. First is the odor it emits. There seems to be some sort of chemical in the rubber of the grip that hit me as soon as I cut the package open. Looking through the viewfinder of my D90 with this on I often hold my breath because with my nose so close it's almost unbearable. It even gave me a headache once. I'll try setting it outside in the sun for a day to see if it improves. My second issue is the ball head holds pretty well, but not perfectly. Occasionally it slips a bit. The knob to tighten the head is just a small metal ring and I'm afraid to put too much torque on it for fear of bending the ring.

So all in all I'm pretty happy with this. It's not pro quality, but I paid less than 1/5 the price of the pro one. And maybe over time the hazardous materials in the rubber will dissipate, hopefully without causing me any permanent health issues.