The 3 Legged Thing Roxie Helps the Canon EOS R5 Capture Better Birds
Essentials is a series featuring products we’re currently lusting over in quick, easy-to-digest posts.
Camera brands that work with third parties for support are fantastic. That’s part of how Sony got to where it is right now. Today, Canon users are getting the new 3 Legged Thing Roxie, a special bracket designed for the Canon EOS R5 and the Canon EOS R6. Of course, its primary use will be birding and wildlife. For both of those cameras, it works surprisingly well once its design is understood. If you’re a Canon EOS R owner, the 3 Legged Thing Roxie will also work, however the sizing will be apparent. If you’re using a telephoto lens with a camera like the Canon EOS R5, the 3 Legged Thing Roxie might even be consideredessential.
The biggest thing to note is that the 3 Legged Thing Roxie was co-developed with Canon. That in and of itself is a massive deal! And that’s why I started my article out the way I did. Over the years, I’ve heard stories of how difficult it is to work with Canon. However, they got it done.
Distilling all this down, the 3 Legged Thing Roxie is an L-bracket for the Canon EOS R6 and Canon EOS R5. 3 Legged Thing is marketing it to landscape and wildlife photographers. It’s made from magnesium alloy, and the design keeps photographers who use the LCD screen in mind. If you want to pull out and rotate the screen, there’s a way to do it. Albeit, you’d be doing this with less flexibility, but you’ll get more stability for sure.
The 3 Legged Thing Roxie is easy to set up. When you look at the mounting, you’ll see two important parts. A small male pin gets inserted into a hole in the bottom of the Canon EOS R5, which helps keep it in place. You can slide both this and the securing screw along a distance. Once you lock the screw into place, you’re ready to shoot. This L-bracket was designed to be able to flip the screen out and use it. Indeed, you can do this, but you’ll lose a bit of flexibility. And this is for a great reason.
L-Brackets are great tools for photographers who want to switch quickly from landscape to vertical mode. You’ll also get more stability when using a Canon RF 100-500mm L lens like we did. The 3 Legged Thing Roxie bracket has edges that come around the side of the port doors. But they’re not in a single, continuous line. Instead, they break at a point. This is one of the only challenges the 3 Legged Thing Roxie has. If you mount it vertically, you have to mount it to the tripod using the bottom section or with careful placement.
The 3 Legged Thing Roxie is made of magnesium alloy. The securement screw is made of stainless steel. The company calls this color seen here “copper” but it’s more like a rusty orange. There is also a slate-gray option. Luckily, it’s built very solid. We originally tried the 3 Legged Thing Roxie with a Canon RF 50mm f1.2. Of course, it could handle that lens easily in landscape configuration. When switched to vertical, it didn’t feel as secure. But after we made some adjustments, it was better. The real challenge came with the Canon RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens. Of course, this is more a lens I’d expect someone to use an L-bracket with.
In landscape configuration, the L-bracket handled the big L lens with no issues. Vertically, we had to be more careful. Mounting the 3 Legged Thing Roxie to the tripod is a precision task that you’d want to do very carefully. We’re using it with the Winston 2.0, and the lens and camera would still droop down a bit after locking the head. Keep this in mind as you’ll need to compensate–there aren’t many tripods that escape this issue for what it’s worth. After some work, though, the 3 Legged Thing Roxie performed very well.
The 3 Legged Thing Roxie is retailing for around $99. Is it worth it? I totally think some photographers would prefer it. There’s a lot less stress on the tripod head versus using the tripod foot on a long lens. Granted, switching to vertical mode is much easier with the lens’s tripod foot. But in our experience, a tripod foot can cause all sorts of balance issues.