Custom Leather Olympus Trip.

A recently retired colleague of mine was kind enough to give me a couple of cameras before he disappeared to Thailand.

The first was a coronet midget. The second was an Olympus Trip.

The Olympus Trip was a successful mass produced camera. It boasted a built in light meter, making taking great photos a point and shoot affair.

The great thing is, you can pick these up for about £15 on ebay.

I had yet to get round to running a roll of film through this camera, and decided it needed a spring clean, and some slight improvements before I put it to good use.

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Step 1: Materials, Parts, and Tools.

You will need the following:

An Olympus Trip, or other vintage camera in need of a new look
A stanley knife, Scalpel, Boxcutter, X-acto Knife, or a Sharpened flint rock.
Plenty of new sharp blades on hand.
Scotch tape
Precision cross head screwdriver
Light seal foam (or something similar that will do the job.)
Pencil
Metal rule (a must for getting a nice cut without ruining the ruler or your fingers)

You may also find use for

Scissors
A soldering iron
Paper to make templates (If you intend on doing this to the same camera over, some templates may be handy)

forbidenarea says: Dec 16, 2012. 1:33 AM

Any chance you have a digital template lying around you could post for downloading please? If not a photograph of a paper one would be enough for me to start from.
I managed to trash the original leatherette as the glue was way too old, pretty strong stuff.

velojym says: Jul 1, 2011. 11:17 AM

Very nice. My K1000 needs a new cover too, but probably a bit thinner. Have you considered tapering the edges for a more finished look? I can imagine that thick leather makes the camera a pleasure to hold, though.