What a hand job!

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I spotted this nice OM1 on Ebay and thought someone had given it the cameraleather.com treatment. It turns out, however, that the seller, Ishmael, cut his own leather by hand as a replacement - and a very nice job he made of it.

Ishmael said he he used leather off-cuts and the result, whilst "not perfect", was much better than the shrinking leatherette that was on the camera. Ishmael said, "It was just luck that I had leather of the correct shade that fits the case and the amber coating on the lens.

"I find it satisfying to bring something back to a high quality with my own hands. I'd be happy to share any tips I've learned if you get any requests for how to do this. I've learned some things having done several now."

The new covering is certainly a good match for the case and the result is a classically pimped Olympus. Just before you go, take a look at the OM1. Has there ever been a better SLR camera design? I'm going to return to this subject at some point as I think 35mm SLRs reached their zenith - and I'm not talking about "features" here - with the OM1. With just one or two exceptions, it was downhill all the way after that!

A brace of Leicas subtly pimped

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This blog isn't going to become just a Leica appreciation society - even though there's much to appreciate - if for no other reason than that I don't own one. I do have a Leitz V35 enlarger but that doesn't count and, anyway, I haven't found a way to pimp it yet.

However, there's no denying that people love their Leicas and equally love to adorn them with all manner of add-ons. (Apologies if this post doesn't read the same as the others but I've just drunk a large glass of wine rather too quickly and can't see straight: I tried typing Babelfish into Google a minute ago and actually typed bblwfiah. Fortunately, muscle memory now seems to have come to the rescue of my fingers).

Further apologies are due now to the guy who pimped these ethnically diverse M6s - one black and one white. I found them on a website in what looked like a Scandinavian language. I searched and searched for an email link so that I could check to see if it would be OK to post them but couldn't figure it out. That's why I was trying to reach Babelfish - only to find out that they don't go in for Scandinavian.

Obviously, if the owner of the cameras objects in any way to their inclusion in this post, I'll ditch them straight away but hopefully that wont be necessary.

The black M6 is wearing a nice Gordy Coale wrist strap, a Leica M grip and a soft release which my limited Scandinavian doesn't allow me to identify. Gordy has a great series of pictures demonstrating how strong his straps are: in short, you can probably abseil with them.

The chrome M6 has a Tom Abrahamsson convex soft release (looks pretty much the same as the one on the black M6 if you ask me), an M grip and a lovely Voigtlander leather strap from Stephen Gandy.

It has to be said that the M6 is a mighty handsome beast, with or without handgrips. If only Leitz had taken a bit more care with the build quality, they might have had something to rival the OM1 ;-)