Less than $10.00 worth of materials went into the bracket. You will need about 1.5 feet of 1.5 inch wide by 1/8 inch thick aluminum. Cut six inches off of that long piece, that 6 inch piece will be your short bracket. Bend the one foot section in half to make the "L" bracket. It has to be perfectly square. The "L" bracket was my pano bracket for my 990 so it has a couple of extra holes in it. You only need one hole in the center of the "L" bracket to hold the camera. The holes on the short flat bracket are the one's that have to be drilled correctly. First you need to mount the short bracket to the "L" bracket so that the center of the short bracket is lined up with the center of the lens. The short bracket also has to be perfectly square to the "L" bracket. I used a pair of vise grips to hold the two brackets together while I drilled the holes. The measurements for the nodal points you can get from my nodal point page http://www.pbase.com/panotaker/nikon_5000_nodal_points You will need to put the bracket together first. Then mount the camera on the bracket. Then go to that nodal points page to measure where you are going to drill the holes for the short bracket. That is the way I did it and the nodal points came out perfect.