Customisable Cheese Plate Mounts

Like the name suggests, cheese plates are camera accessory mount plates with many holes drilled into them resembling Swiss cheese. If you are a person not satisfied with the standard mounting option of camera meets tripod then cheese plates will give you more versatility in your mount options. Cheese plates are one of the unsung heroes of the camera world, and one of the most versatile pieces of camera mounting hardware you can own. The first function is to serve as a camera mounting plate to attach your camera while offering you the choice of various offsets, lets say to let your shooting eye meet your EVF better, mouting your flash to the right or left of your camera versus the traditional top mount, or if you are a leftie wanting to mount stuff that suits you more comfortably.

Traditional cheese plates came in two colours: silver (metal) or black (anodised), are square or rectangle in shape, and have a plethora of holes to help you mount and rig wherever and however you need to get the job done. The reason for the black option is simply for cutting down on the reflections towards the lens. Today you can find them as bars, camera cages and other configurations. Anton Bauer makes some really sexy ones in his MATRIX lineup.

More unique cheese plates come in round circles or even angled plates. They’ve even found ways to create camera mounts on top of cheese plates. Other variations of the plates come with counter-sunk holes for clean mounting and some even come pre-tapped with standard 3/8”-16 and/or ¼”-20 threads for easier mounting and rigging.

With the boom of DSLRs used by more and more people to shoot video, camera accessory manufacturers found a way to help turn this small image capturing device into a full-fledged production video camera. The addition of a light, battery, audio recording device, or even a microphone wasn’t as simple as one thought. Small-form cheese plates, such as “cheese sticks” or “cheese bars,” became more useful in small spaces and on cameras that didn’t have mounting options built-in. With the amount and variety of mounting points there are an endless variety of accessories that can be attached. There are (14) ¼-20 and (4) 3/8-16 threaded holes (industry standard sizes) in addition to four 5/16” and five 3/8” pass through holes.

You can find relatively cheap CNC ones manufactured by CAMVATE and SMALLRIG, right up to the absurdly expensive RED, VOCAS, ZACUTO and GENUSTECH ones. Apart from photography I also see a big potential for a myriad of DIY uses.