Dear readers, I recently received my Life+Guard camera and lens skin delivered from Taiwan. This camera gears covering are actually precision-cut vehicle-grade 3M vinyl stickers that protect and impart a customised look to your camera gears.
They are known as Alphagvrd in the USA. So Life+Guard and AlphaGuard are the same thing. Options for Sony gears are the widest as they started with Sony. But they have since expanded to include most major brands.
The Product
The item came promptly delivered in cupboard protected flat-packed mail in the letterbox. The projected international delivery time is between 10-25 working days subject to recipient country and location tracking code availability. FedEx service is available for 3-5 working days.
The 3M automotive-grade vinyl skins is high quality and precision-cut as stated on the country website.
Just need a tweezer and a plastic credit card (or any disused card) to facilitate the pasting. Its actually quite an therapeutic experience to install the various pieces of stickers. You can watch the installation video here.
After about 1 hour, I completed the transformative process. The skin has a textured surface and feel great to the touch. In the event of removal, the 3M quality vinyl leaves no sticky residue. The skins are projected to last about 5 years.
I certainly love my “new” lens. Some friends asked me what if I wanted to sell the lens? Honestly speaking, why would I want to remove the skins? It look great and may even attract a slightly higher price.
Conclusion
I would recommend ordering from their Taiwan webpage (especially those residing in Asia) as there is much wider range with more delivery option. Some photographers may prefer the neoprene version from LensCoat or Rolandpro, but this is thin vinyl wrap has its benefits.
With the Life+Guard camera and lens skin, you retain all the original function of the lenses, whereas in the neoprene version, you may be unable to use certain function like the manual focus ring (e.g. on my Canon EF100-400mm F4.5-5.6 L IS II) due to the neoprene tailoring design.
On the flip side, being thinner, this vinyl wrap may not absorb knocks as well as thicker neoprene wraps. For more information, you may refer to the company website- https://www.lifeguard-design.com/pages/about-us. For my other gears and event reviews, please feel free to check out here.