How to paint your dslr

I have had a Canon 10D with a broken shutter lying around and finally found what to do with it. I searched endlessly online for people who have tried this and all I found was the disastrous painting of a D90 on DigitalRev. I decided to try it and I found my results to be very pleasing.

I must advise you that this has a very high chance of screwing up your camera, especially if you mess up on the masking job. My pop-up flash was permanently popped-up, but I never use the pop-up flash anyways so I just super-glued it down.

For this Instructable you will need: A dslr camera, masking tape, spray-paint, super glue,  and an x-acto knife.

(the camera shown below is not finished yet as I still have to go in with details and buy an eyecup for it)

Step 1: Prepare the camera

Pick out what colors you will be using. The number of parts you can paint vary from camera to camera, but generally their would be the body and however many grips there are. I used satin for the grip and gloss for the body. The decision is all up to you.

Prepare the camera for masking and painting by taking out the batteries (not that we will take the camera apart, but so that we don't accidentally paint the battery).

Then sand any brassing or rough parts down using fine sand paper (120+).

Finally I wiped down the camera with a slightly wet sponge just to get it clean. 

Comments

[jacco1997]

The rubber grips have totally held their paint, the little rubber piece that covers the video out, flash in/out, and all that has not done too well because of the whole flexibility thing. The body has done a pretty decent job with the paint though. The bottom has some scratches and chips from being abused. A topcoat probably could have been worthwhile.

[go_teague]

Hey, saw your awesome paint job! Super rad. I was wondering, how the paint has held up over the months since you painted it. Any chipping, cracking etc?

[Ahhamado]

what about "SONY NEX MIRRORLESS"? anyone try it to give it colour already?

[ElvenChild]

On DigitalRev Kai painted it "magenta" not pink...

[equezada campos]

awesome, i´ll try it
GOOD JOB

[tarepanday]

Great Job! Congratz!
So the paint will not get in the camera through the gaps between buttons?
I have wanted to paint my old SLR for the longest time but haven't really taken any actions yet.. I actually bought model paint for my project but still not have the time to try it out yet. I was thinking of using model paint and use paint brush to paint the whole thing :S

[jacco1997]

Nothing appears to have made its way into the camera. Just do a good job on masking and then everything turns out well. I strongly urge you to not try to paint by hand. It is impossible. Stick with spray paint and if you want to paint the buttons, do a first coat of the buttons' color and wait for that to try fully so you can mask off the buttons. Then paint with the bodies color. I tried painting the buttons by hand and I found it very tricky.

[tarepanday]

Do you mean try to spray paint the buttons (or at least around the spot of the buttons) first, let it dry and mask it off before painting the body? What should I do with the gaps around the buttons then?
Did you just let the paint slightly go over the buttons or did you make sure the paint fill the gap as well?

Thanks so much for answering :)

[jacco1997]

Exactly, paint buttons or button area (with button color) then mask off buttons and paint body (with body color). The gap around the buttons should not be a problem unless it is really big. In that case I would just let it be and just go with masking off the buttons only. There was a gap on the shutter release and it turned out alright with just an extra coat.

[tarepanday]

thanks, what if i want to have the buttons and body in the same colour? then i can skip the button-masking part?

[jacco1997]

That is what I did. Don't try to hand-paint it though, that did not work well for me.

[tarepanday]

Thanks! I will definitely post some pictures after I try it out one day!

[jacco1997]

Good luck!

[Ghost Wolf]

Nice color at least the camera isn't an embarrassing color like pink.

[jacco1997]

I was considering pink but could not find a good pink.

[Ghost Wolf]

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Don't even think of pink might as well send it t me were it is safe from embarrassment. This camera (below) should be smashed!

[jacco1997]

I was thinking doing pink just to show DigitalRev the right way to paint a camera pink. I was very happy it did not turn out like that disastrous thing.

[killerjackalope]

Not the colour I'd choose but great job, got my trusty 10D right beside me, how many shots did you take before the shutter broke? This one's hitting 10K and needs a service...

[jacco1997]

I bought this one used, so I don't know how many were on it then, but I had it for about a year and probably managed to put at least 20k to 30k shots on it before it gave out. I loved this thing. Now seeing as how successful the paint job was I am considering getting the shutter fixed.

[killerjackalope]

it should be able to tell you, though I don't know what happens to sequential image naming at the 10K mark, if it rolls over or gets named IMG_10001...

That's sounding like good news though, the paint job looks really well done and certainly makes the camera your own, granted I've never seen anyone with another 10D in their hand...

[jacco1997]

I think that the 1D series has folders that go up rather than how the 10D just goes back to img_0001. I guess that a way to check that would be to go into where you have your pictures stored and search for how many 0001 pictures there are from your camera.

[killerjackalope]

Odd, my 10D saves so many in a numbered folder, makes a new one then continues the image names in sequence, I assume it goes back one though...

[jacco1997]

I've never looked too closely at all the folders and file numbers, but I think it would be interesting just to see how many shots this camera went though.

[killerjackalope]

I notice it often because of the way I organise my shots from shoots in to folders, along with the way I open, edit/crop save the good ones... When you hit info on an image in the camera playback mode I just noticed it shows you a folder number and an image number in the top right, maybe that knows...

[jacco1997]

I just checked mine and it says 101-0112. So assuming that is accurate, it died right when it was said to. I wonder if it would work to load on some of my first photos taken on it to see how many I got off it.

[killerjackalope]

Don't know, it must roll over for both though because mine's 292-9273...

[jacco1997]

I don't remember mine ever numbering past 4000. I may be wrong because I haven't used it in a while, but I'll check.

[killerjackalope]

I have the suspicion we're getting awful curious about something unimportant, however when I get round to service time I'll ask if the camera keeps track...

[jacco1997]

Sounds good. Hopefully it will be a while until that is needed though.

[tholopotami]

My friend, I admire your courage!
Although the result looks nice in a surrealistic sense, the combination of DSLR, x-acto knife, spay paint and super glue is atrocious!
You may use this object to scare amateur photographers and to cause a heart stroke to professionals!

[jacco1997]

I am realizing that the simplicity of this may definitely scare off people, but I'm sure there will eventually be one or two brave fellows who can have the courage (or heartlessness) to paint their camera.

[lennyb]

actually i think this would be a good theft deterrent.
i did a similar thing to a kodak easy share i used to keep in my car.
door locks were broken and i know my car was rummaged in a few times but no one ever stole the camera

[bertus52x11]

I would call this a "daring" project.
Nice nevertheless.

[djgrinch]

Looks awesome =)
Great 'able