If you change regularly the support under your camera and have dreamt of a solution to the multiple plates used and the difficulty to get supports from different brands to work together, even if there are some industry standards that everybody mentions in their specifications, then the new product from Edelkrone is for you. It’s called the QuickRelease One.

The name chosen suggests two things: either that we can expect a number two in the future, or, most probably, that the company considers this to be the number one quick release, because it is meant to be universal, so, logically, the first choice for users who want to work fast and need to move their cameras from one device to another often.

With a price of $139, the QuickRelease One is presented as “The only universal release system in the world”. To achieve their goal Edelkrone looked at plates from different brands and discovered that there is one common element to all (most?) of them: the 1/4″ -20 screw. So they created a quick release system based on that common element. It’s a small piece of machined aluminium and stainless steel components based on patented design that allows for fast and secure.

The design takes advantage of the only common piece that is available on all quick release plates, which is the 1/4″ -20 screw. The patented design makes it possible to lock on the screw fast and secure. Edelkrone says the system is easy to use and that the ergonomic lever allows users to tighten the screw comfortably with only one hand. Also, the lever can be positioned any way you like, making it easy to change batteries. On the images available, with a Canon camera in use, it is perfectly visible that the lid to the battery compartment can easily be accessed with the QuickRelease One attached to the camera, something I find difficult to do with the Manfrotto plates I use.

The QuickRelease One allows users to keep the plates on different devices and just move the camera with the QuickRelease One attached from one device to another. If you’re using two cameras… yes, you’ll need to buy two QuickRelease One. If you want to change between cameras and only use one device, you need to have the tools to unscrew the screws that make the system work. But if you’re just using one camera and the QuickRelease One, you can forget about things like searching for tools or the right sized coin to get a plate changed, like you did before. The QuickRelease One will not only spare you time, but also spare you money, if you’re the kind of person who loses plates all the time.

The QuickRelease One is small, with 70x49x21mm, weighs 125g, and can take loads up to 3kg, an indication that it is optimized for all DSLRs and other lightweight cameras. And while it secures your camera fast and, adds Edelkrone, withstands, shocks, shakes, pushes and pulls, it is the users responsibility to make sure that the QuickRelease One is mounted to a system with standard screws. That’s the way to make the “universal” concept work.