Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Bonjour, tout le monde! Es-tu un “poseur“? A poseur (poser) is someone who fakes his credentials to gain respect. He will try to wear expensive clothes to impress people or claim to be someone that he isn’t. I do not think it’s always a bad thing because we all have fantasies of our own, whatever they are. I sometimes imagine myself as a buff plumber giving assistance to a helpless housewife. We are all free to live up our own fantasies. There’s always a child inside of us, and this goes with photography as well. You can live an illusion all you want and it can sometimes be temporary so you can get back to your normal life when it’s convenient. We should never do anything permanent until we are in the right mindset. Today, I will show you how to live your wildest dreams, that is if you want to fantasize about being a press photographer.

Introduction:

Many people purchase cameras based on how they look and feel in their hands, these are accessories as much as they are tools. A lot of people buy black Leicas (or other black classic cameras) because of how they look when they are worn and weathered. Unfortunately, that worn look takes plenty of time and lots of handling just to get the brass parts underneath peeking out, and even more time and handling just so the patina will look just right. Some people don’t have the time and patience for that, so they cheat it by using sandpaper or denim to permanently wear the paint down. The result looks fake as fuck, but so are they. I will show you in this article an alternative way so you won’t fall into this foolishness, what’s better is it’s all temporary and you can clean it off anytime. It will also work on plastic parts, too!

This is the result that I got after spending not more than 10 minutes of faking the look of a worn camera. Do you think it looks convincing? I don’t think so but it can fool somebody looking from a meter or more.

The technique I will show you is just one way of doing it. It’s the most accessible technique and you won’t use any special tools like specialist brushes or sponges. In fact, you can buy these from a dollar store just like I did! In case you’re wondering how I learned this, I was a scale modeler for many years.

You will need a metallic marker such as this one, any color will do and it will depend on what you want. It won’t matter if you choose an oil or water-based marker but I prefer something more durable. You’ll need a Q-tip and some alcohol or whatever solvent your marker responds to.

Begin by dabbing a small part with some paint (or ink), do it one spot at a time. You’ll want to apply it to a place where the camera gets worn out first. Places that come in contact with fingers, jewelry and other things inside a camera bag.

Immediately after applying the color, smear the wet ink to make it look natural. This will depend on where you have applied this effect so the direction of where you smear it matters a lot. If it looks ugly, redo it by cleaning off the mess and giving it another shot.

The corners are always going to be worn out the quickest. In my experience, this part is particularly easy to scratch because people wear rings on their left hands.

A little bit of smearing makes it look a lot more natural.

Another technique is to saturate the Q-tip with some ink and scrubbing the fine details so that the raised areas will pick up the color. This is similar to a technique called “dry brushing“, search it on the internet. It is important that you do this quickly because the ink dries quickly and the cotton will soak it up.

Remember to not overdo it, just add it to places that will be susceptible to being scratched. Nothing looks faker than overdoing it, like a porn actress faking climax.

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Here are more photos of what I did. Remember, I only spent a few minutes doing this and it’s not serious at all. I think it doesn’t look that bad especially if you’re looking from afar. The effect will look a lot better if I spend more time working on it and applying silver ink on some parts, too. The lettering can also look a bit dirtier by applying a thin wash of gray paint. I’m not going to do that because I’m not a poseur.

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Here’s the before and after photos of my poor black Nikon Z fc. I don’t think it will stay like this for long, I will probably clean it one day when I’m tired (or embarrassed) of how it looks. The things I will do for you all, my dear readers.

Give it a shot if you’re shameless (or just creative)! Remember to not overdo it, also add more weathering to the base of the camera and also to the on-off ring. I did not do that in my example, so maybe I should. Try this out for yourself before you do something stupid like permanently modifying your camera using a sheet of sandpaper or file. That’s not the way to do it, be authentic and bring your camera in your bag so you will earn the look instead of just simulating it. Don’t scratch a Tesla, do it on your camera instead.

Did you enjoy my condescending article? Don’t be offended because we enjoy a good laugh here in this blog, some people come here just to read my jokes. If you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends. Doing so will help this site a lot because I only earn a few cents a day from unique views. It’s a real labor of love, where else can you find someone who will do this to their expensive camera For your entertainment apart from the guys who would paint their cameras pink from a long time ago. Thank you very much and see you guys again in my next article, Ric.

Help Support this Blog:

Maintaining this site requires resources and a lot of time. If you think that it has helped you or you want to show your support by helping with the site’s upkeep, you can make a small donation to my paypal.com at richardHaw888@gmail.com. Money isn’t my prime motivation for this blog, I believe I have enough to run this myself but you can help me make this site grow.

Helping support this site will ensure that it will be kept going as long as I have the time and energy for this. I’d appreciate it if you just leave out your name or details like your country’s name or other info so that the donations will totally be anonymous. This is a labor of love and I intend to keep it that way for as long as I can. Ric.