How come no one here seems to 'pimp' their SLRs?

When I got my Minolta XD-11, the original cover was shrunken and pretty much torn up.

From Aki-Asahi:

xd-11_front_450.jpg


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Got a used F3 whose rubber had a strange white haze on it, so I took that as an opportunity to install real leather courtesy Cameralether.

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I removed RICOH and XR-20sp lettering (color on flat plastic) with finest sandpeper from prism and body, polished that places with calcium based toothpaste, mounted 45mm pancake and got sights from Japanese tourists while moving in crowd with them (pictures of picture-takers).

Too bad, it jammed soon after facelift manipulation (my fault at repairing sticky mirror). Models with embossed lettering aren't so easy to mod.
 
When I think of "Bling" for a camera I'm thinking a leather strap or a set of close up filters or maybe a soft release button NOT hot pink paint and a boa for a camera strap...
I have too much respect for my cameras to do that^^^...
 
My diamond encrusted Nikon F4 was stolen by some honkys looking to sell it to a pawn shop for $26.78 before I could make a picture of it. :(
 
You guys must be reading my mind, I just posted about this on the flickr OM group. I'm thinking about giving my black OM-1n the gray Griptac treatment, or maybe even red leather! Or maybe I'll go more subtle and go with green.

I've also been on the lookout for a GMP Unigrip for a while now, those things are hard to find! In the meantime, I've modded a non-working Winder 2 that I got for less than a buck from KEH:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pooroldpunch/4077293908/
 
nikku said:
You guys must be reading my mind, I just posted about this on the flickr OM group. I'm thinking about giving my black OM-1n the gray Griptac treatment, or maybe even red leather! Or maybe I'll go more subtle and go with green.
Click to expand...

Hi, my idea of subtle would be a green dot instead of a red one for the lining up of the lens and the body. Still it takes all sorts...

Regards, David
 
SLR's are cool without pimping. Pimping them will make them un-cool:

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* here's one to wash away that pink F3 image ... (shudder)


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* what? the candy-corn? that's not pimping, that's a badge from my daughter, she likes to put stickers everywhere including my cameras.


RF's however :D :

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*this one is strictly from my wife's collection of red cameras, and by that I don't mean Eastern-bloc countries ;)
 
IMO, slrs dont get pimped because they very rarely need to be taken apart, and taking them apart just to repaint them is a colossal pain. Rangefinders seem to need to be taken apart and fiddled with every ten to twenty years, so people figure they might as well refinish them in the process. Also, for the most part, you don't have the massive shortages of black cameras like you do with a lot of Rangefinders, so people who want something other than chrome can easily get something other than chrome. Sure, there are some exceptions, like the K1000, which only came in chrome, but there probably arent that many people who want a black K1000 badly enough to have it disassembled, painted, and reassembled. Perhaps we will start seeing more pimped SLR cameras in about thirty years, who knows? Also, while I might laugh WITH someone who has pimped their FSU, I would probably laugh AT someone who did any sort of heavy pimping to their SLR. Also, SLRs tend to generally fall in to two categories- those that are so ugly that no amount of pimping will improve them, and those that are already beautiful as they are (even the ones like the F2, which is, in my eyes, so ugly it is gorgeous).
 
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I have three XD-11s with the original shrink-wrap covering. One has been recovered with slate blue kid skin; I'm thinking indian red for the next one. I did up an FTb with grey grip tac last year. And I keep looking at my F-1, imagining it covered in red lizard skin...

Anybody know where I can get some tiny fuzzy dice to hang from the mirror?
 
Nikon's synthetic covering seems to really last. I have an S2 that it is worn on, but not so much that I need to replace it. I have the replacement waiting, just in case.
 
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