Forget the uber-expensive Leica cameras with their special edition embossed ostrich skin. Custom cut exotic skins is what it’s all about! CameraLeather is a company that can outfit or restore your camera with a wide range of different materials. You can go from the basic goat skin leather all the way up to lizard and snake skins. The above Olympus camera is sporting the black & white cobra skin covering. It’s not too pricey either — outfitting a 35mm SLR with snake skin starts at $40.

Leica recently ran a series of billboard advertisements promoting the S2 medium format DSLR and V-Lux 1. The billboards were quite unique in that they were individually made to show the wall they were placed on, with the details of the wall blown up to highlight the 12x optical zoom of the V-Lux 1 and the 37.5 megapixel sensor of the S2.
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This strange looking device is the Leica S1, the first digital camera created by the company back in 1996. At at time when film was still the medium of choice in the photo industry, the S1 packed a whopping 26-megapixels, shooting 5140x5140px medium format images. The strange looking handles on either side help the user frame the shot, but aren’t designed for handheld stabilization — each shot took three minutes to expose. Only about 160 of these cameras were built, and were mostly sold to museums and research institutions.

The Leica S1 (via Gizmodo)

Instructables member willferrari599 recently posted a funny tutorial on how to turn a cheap $20 disposable camera into a ridiculously ghetto looking fake Leica. It’d be sad if you took this tutorial seriously, but a camera like this might make a hilarious present for a photography-loving friend!

How to Leica-ify a $20 camera

There was quite an outcry back in September when we shared the iCannon 4 project, where some guy gutted his Canon film SLR to use it as a shell for an iPhone 4. The frankencamera shown above is a bit cooler – it was created using a Russian Leica imitation and a Sony DSC-WX1 digital compact. Both cameras were disassembled, with the rangefinder contributing the outer shell and then Sony cam offering the inner workings. What’s amazing is that the resulting camera looks like a nicely designed retro digital compact – similar to the new FujiPix X100.
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Behold — A Leica M8 camera created using Lego bricks! Schfio Factory this awesome toy camera using a $50 pink Lego digital camera and carefully building bricks around it to turn into Leica look-alike. It shoots at 3 megapixels and holds up to 80 photographs on its internal memory. Sweet.
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In China there’s a belief that burning paper representations of a deceased person’s belongings allows it to be transfered to the afterlife for the departed person to use. Au Yeung Ping Chi, an effigy maker in Hong Kong and the owner of Bo Wah Effigies, is often asked to create effigies of trendy consumer items such as iPhones and Nintendo Wiis for relatives of those who die young. The above is a camera he created for the purpose of afterlife photography. He’ll probably be asked to create Leica M9 Titanium editions soon.

Check out some more of Au Yeung’s paper creations here.

(via Photojojo)

Leica’s announcements at Photokina have been pretty dull so far compared to some of the other cameras that have been unveiled. Aside from announcing a Panasonic LX5 rebranded as a Leica D-LUX 5 and a Panasonic FZ100 rebranded as a Leica V-Lux 2, they’ve also announcement a “Titanium” version of the M9 digital rangefinder of which only 500 pieces will be made.
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This Leica MP2 camera and matching Wetzlar electric motor are going up for auction at WestLicht Auction in December of this year. The starting price for this auction is €80,000 (~$105,000), and the camera is expected to fetch up to €180,000 (~$235,440).

The reason this camera is so darn valuable is because while Leica MP2s are already quite rare, only six of them were ever made in black. This is one of them — the first to ever be offered for sale, and in fully original condition. Welcome to the crazy wonderful world of Leica collecting.

Do you think photographers in the future (assuming they exist) will be collecting any cameras being made during our time?

(via The Online Photographer)

Remember the awesome Leica M9 iPhone 4 skin that we featured back in August? If you desperately wanted one, today is your lucky day — we’ve created our own and it’s for sale in the PetaPixel Store for $13 with free shipping within the US!

The super detailed plastic skin is designed to protect your iPhone 4 while making it look just like a Leica rangefinder camera.
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