also confused

FrankS

FrankS

Registered User
Local time
4:57 PM
Joined
Aug 23, 2004
Messages
19,348
Here's my M2 (with new brown lizzard skin) with a Canon 85mm f2 lens.

I heartily endorse Aki Asahi's die-cut camera covering replacements. If you are thinking about it at all, do it! The fit was perfect. The price was right.

Aki even sent another set of leatherette for practice. I got cocky on the second skin and omitted wetting the adhesive with alcohol and didn't do nearly as good a job as with the first practice skin.
 
Last edited:
Frank,

It looks great!!! On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being very easy, how would you rate recovering a camera? And using the same scale, 10 being the best score, how would you rate the results verses the original factory leather fit.
I so much would love to recover a camera body but I feel that I would not be happy with the results if it didn't look factory.
My daughter has a Pentax ME that I would love to recover in a Pink or Maroon leather. It's a simple camera to do, so I could be up for that.
I have a Nikon F2A that I would be willing to do also, although it's original covering is just about perfect right now.
On the M2, how was the old covering and what drove you to recover it, if the original leather wasn't too bad??
 
very classy looking, Leica should have offered brown.

Todd
 
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the easiest, this was a 9. You just have to remember to coat the adhesive with rubbing alcohol to prolong the drying period so you can move the leather around. I rated it a 9 and not a 10 because I messed up by forgetting to do this . The practice cover was so easy (with the alcohol) that I was cocky in doing the brown leather.

As far as fit goes, it is as perfect as factory fit.

The original vulcanite covering on this M2 began to chip off. I was sad about it, but welcomed the opportunity for a new look. The leather feels much nicer than the original cover.
 
Last edited:
Joe, this is so easy, it's no big deal, even for lazy guys like you and me. I'm going to order another cover for my M3 tonight in brown. (This was called oak colour.)
 
from what i've read, it's the taking off of the original cover that takes most of the energy.

what confuses me is the title of your thread frank, 'also confused'?
what am i missing?

joe
 
Mmmmmm, Summicron.

I didn't get the beat up P, maybe I will go throw out a couple low bids on some Rigids.
 
FrankS said:
Sorry Joe, it related to Ralph's post about his Leica with the Canon 50mm f1.5.
Click to expand...

doh!

i'm gettin bad at this stuff lately.

how did you find taking off the original cover, was it a pita?

joe
 
I concur with Frank on this. Do it! I recovered my FED 2 with one of Aki Asahi's coverings. The alcohol on the glue trick makes it very easy to slide it around to get it postioned correctly. However, removing Russian vulcanite may be harder that removing German vulcanite. The Russian vulcanite took several coats of industrial strength paint stripper. It wasn't going to chip off. As much of a pain as it was it was more than worth it! I wonder what cover to use next month.....
 
FrankS said:
Here's my M2 (with new brown lizzard skin) with a Canon 85mm f2 lens.

I heartily endorse Aki Asahi's die-cut camera covering replacements. If you are thinking about it at all, do it! The fit was perfect. The price was right.
Click to expand...

Price was how much ?? Is Akis product better than cameraleather.coms ?

Nice work Frank
 
I really love the red leather from Aki Asahi on my Kiev 4. I'm probably going to get another red Kiev 4 kit to do my 5 in. It's easy as it can be and the improvement to the look and feel of the camera is increadable. I've never used cameraleather.com, but I'll happily recommend Aki's leather.

William
 
CameraLeather.com has, I feel, a much nicer selection of leather. His prices are quite a bit higher, particularly for the wrap around Leicas. CameraLeather also seems to support a wider range of cameras. At least for my FSU cameras, it's hard to justify spending more on the covering than the camera cost. Having cut my own leather for my Agfa Isolette II, die-cut leather is the way to go.
 
It took about 1/2 hour to dry-chip away the original vulcanite covering. I did not have to resort to paint-remover. I found that lighter fluid dissolved some of the remaining original adhesive to clean the body up farther. All in all, 1 hour spent fiddling with my Leica to get it ready. About 10 minutes installing the new cover.

I can not comment on CameraLeather products as I have never used them but I've never heard anything negative said about them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom