Customize your camera ?

[milandro]

Let’s face it most of us like to put our own “ stamp” onto the things which we use. Give it a personal touch with something which will make our cameras feel as more a reflection our own personality and different from everyone else’s.

 

So the “ traditional” approach has fueled a strain of small companies making straps, half or whole cases, all manners of bags, shutter release buttons, thumb grips, you name it it is there.

 

But none of this is really radically changing the way our cameras look.

 

Some time ago a small Japanese company, Aka-Asahi http://aki-asahi.com/store/  started offering some limited form of customization giving the possibilities to the Fuji user to change the “ skins” of their camera, Fujifilm itself responded, in the UK with a custom shop selling way overpriced and more limited options to do more or less ( quite a bit less!) the same (and keep the guarantee since the Aka-Asahi customization meant that you automatically lost all rights to any guarantee.

 

But is this it?

 

Did anybody do any better?

 

Are there Steampunk Fujifilm Cameras out there?

 

Of course I am not talking of artificially worn-out cameras ( like the ridiculous Leica-Krawitz) , or cameras with various array of gaffer tape to hide the logos ( please, I really don’t want to talk of this, again!) or even cameras sporting the logo of another brand.

 

 

Is there the equivalent of the Hot-Rod camera out there emulating things like those cars pr motorbikes which come out from a good old fashioned chop-shop?

[darknj]

I remember their Woodlike skin on the X100 camera, it was quite well done and did looked great.

 

But I haven't found anybody else doing that.

[milandro]

as much as I liked that kind of thing, I was thinking that even their brighter coloured skins were quite tame versions of what could be achievable, at very least as a one off, which is really what I am asking to see.

[aceflibble]

If I could get hold of some sparkly purple material, I'd finally buy a black Fuji and really go to town on it. Love me anything in black & purple. That colour-changing paint that TVR cars use would be cool, too.

I've often thought about buying a second hand Pro1—since that has the most clean surface area to mess with—just to experiment modifying. A side business and hobby of mine is building and customising guitars, and I have many friends who work in special effects and prop making for the film and TV industry, so I'm confident I could get some pretty extreme stuff done either myself or through friends. LED inner wraps, heat resistant paints (practical!), glow-in-the-dark, etching. I have some ideas...

But alas, second hand prices of the Pro1 still haven't fallen far enough for it to be 'throw away' money.

[milandro]

the simple applying of paint or other materials to the rubberized parts or the whole of the surface of a camera is nothing new really, it has been done for decades and many examples can be found of such individual modifications.

 

There are also examples of more or less limited custom options offered by the company itself such as the Pentax Q 10.

 

 

 

But I thought to see in anyone here had come up with something more that it has been done before!

[Vidalgo]

Perhaps a camera's robber would prefer a standard exterior look but no one of such fancy modded. So, deep exterior customization has some sense.