Last Updated on 03/04/2014 by Chris Gampat
If you’re a reputable camera manufacturer, especially one serving a more demanding selection of customers, then you have to have an in-house customization program. Leica has had one for years, called ‘Leica à la carte,’ which would let you customize your camera’s button design, color, and leatherette, among other things. Hasselblad lets you choose how overpimped you’d like your new Lunar or Stellar camera to be. And now it seems that Fujifilm has decided it was about time to offer custom design options for its X-series cameras.
On a new microsite, Fujifilm offers current owners as well as prospective buyers of select X-series models to have their camera equipped with a customized leatherette. There’s a vast selection of different colors and materials, including some with the names of animals in their designation–we assume that ‘Beige Lizard’ and ‘Black Croc’ merely describe the look of the leatherette, and not its actual provenance. However, judging from the price tag at which the customizations are offered, we’re not entirely sure.
Currently, it seems the program is only available in the UK, and if you’d like to get your X-series camera officially pimped by Fujifilm, then you can order a skin of your choice for as little as GBP 129.99–that’s US-$ 217 at current exchange rates. Quite honestly, we don’t think any of the (presumably) synthetic leatherettes look good enough to warrant such a high price tag.
In our humble opinion, you’d be much better off ordering a third party leatherette from eBay and applying it to your camera yourself. Not only does that give you many more (and nicer) options, it’ll also cost you less. And if you absolutely must spend that much money on a new skin for your camera, you can at least get one made from actual crocodile leather. Or better yet, leather from a python that recently devoured a crocodile. Yeah, that sounds very manly, doesn’t it.
Via Photo Rumors