Making a camera look better.

While a lot of cameras have chrome or brass, there are also a lot of cameras that have their metal parts covered black.

I would imagine that these black finishes are some sort of sprayed on and baked on finish designed to be durable and to stick on the metal.

I have run across some cameras that I would like to buy because they work perfectly and are available at a very reasonable price. But they look atrocious, mostly because of missing black on the matal parts.

Short of having these metal parts professionally recoated, what are the other options? By that I mean what specific products have you used to coat the metal parts on your camera so that everything looks as factory new as possible. And if you have used any specific products that worked real well for you, did you also use any special procedures to do it.

Whatever you do, don't use black magic marker. I got some gear a while back that somebody had done that do. It photographed okay as a result, but it looked like hell up close.

Factory finishes are hard to duplicate. Here's something that may work though - http://www.midwayusa.com/product/598...k-6-oz-aerosol

N.B. I would no sooner paint a gun than I would flap my arms and expect to fly to the moon, but these bake on finishes are very handy for other things.

Don't assume that having them powder coated professionally will necessarily be really expensive. There have been small-scale powder coating firms all over the place in most countries I've visited (on other business) - if you're prepared to wait until they are using black on another job, they shouldn't charge much to coat a few small parts.

Otherwise, a good metal paint (we tend to use Hammerite in the UK) will look OK as long as you clean off all the old paint thoroughly before you start, but it won;t be as tough as a proper powder-coated finish.

My old Calumet C-1 looks like HELL, but is perfect in operation. Its one of the Green Monsters and the Magnisium (sp) has begun to corrode (sp) through the paint. IMHO I could give a rats a$$ what it looks like. That's my $0.02.