Since I got the 60D, I shot a couple of pictures, but I really missed a grip for shooting portraits and for the balance...
The balance was actually fine while I used a really crappy lens (28-80 from Sigma) which was very light. Switching to my 100mm f2.8 Canon macro, or my 18-250 Tamron really makes the camera nose heavy, and I miss the extra palmrest. So I decided to get a grip, and after looking around for some reviews I decided to get an aftermarket version (about 60EUR vs. 160EUR for a Canon original).
The build quality is fine, not great but good enough. There is one small gap at the door which doesn't close completely, but other than that there's not much I can nag about. I took some photos of the various components, to get a feeling how much everything weighs, and how I can balance things out using a stabilizer (which I intend to build *).
The grip (the Meike version) takes 2 LP-E6's or 6 regular AA batteries, just like the Canon grip. There is another aftermarket grip which only takes 2 LP-E6's, but uses a different loading mechanism (like the grip on the Canon 7D you can simply take out either of the batteries while the camera is still switched on).
*Footnote: Actually I already built a first crappy version, but was thinking about designing a better one. Still not sure what style I'll chose (either something like the Glidecam 2000 HD or like the Steadicam Merlin), but that's probably material for another blog entry.
