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Cheapest camera you've ever made money with?

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Prognathous

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Just curious... :-)

Prog.
 
Well I've sold images from a 1937 6x9 camera that I brought from a junk shop in Eastern Europe for less than a quid (£1.00 to all you Americrans)

But thats not something I can regualrly make money from to the extent where I pay my mortage and eat, which is maybe the question you should be asking?

I've seen images sold for lots of money made with Holgas, Seagulls and even homemade pinhole cameras, but again they are not something you can live off.
 
My first travel shoot was 2 months in thailand with a Pentax ME Super and Vivitar 28-90mm - easily the worst lens i've ever owned. Came back with 3 pictures that paid for the trip and went on to earn $1000s

One of the best things about shooting film was that as long as the pic was acceptably sharp, no one ever knew (or cared) what it was shot with. Now it's all there in the exif data. i dont even remember talking about gear that much with other shooters pre-digital. We talked about pictures and commissions and how much to charge and all that but the gear was pretty irrelevant.
--
http://www.thedrunkenboat.net
 
Larry Berman said:
What do you mean by cheap? Are you referring to price or features?
Click to expand...
What do features have to do with anything, a large propotion of my work, that does make me a regular living has been taken manually using a light meter.

You don't need 'features'
 
Larry Berman said:
What do you mean by cheap? Are you referring to price or features?
Click to expand...
Price. I don't see how features are related to something being "cheap", but granted, English is not my mother tongue.

Prog.
 
Yashica D - 120 roll film TLR - The camera was about $45.00 new.

Complete with 2 roll up backgrounds, background stand, tripod, 2 flash units (1 a wireless slave) and the golf bag to hold it - the whole set up was about $150.00 ( as I recall). I was taking baby home portraits of 4 week old kids at $5.00 a sitting back in 1969.

Almost forgot - when we finished shooting the roll of the kid, we would switch cameras real fast and shoot 1/2 roll of 35mm on a old kodak 3d camera that belonged to the boss. On a very good day I could do 10 - 12 sittings, usually it was closer to half that. - If everything went well, I could get in and out of a house in less than 15 min. - Fine art it was not!
With that and the GI bill, I was one of the more well off kids at college.

Thanks for the memories.
 
Yashca C - Bought NEW with some of my Bar Mitzva loot (I think it was under $30.00), in 1956. Shot for my school paper and actuallyI sold my first photos to a local paper. Then went on to shoot actors head shots. Learned that, when shooting actors, you get paid at the time of the shooting! But that's another story. Anyway, probably ran a couple of thousands of rolls through that camera and ended up contributing it to a local charity.
 
My SLR broke down at a wedding and this was my contingency camera. I was shooting to work my way through school and couldn't afford a second SLR. It took a little longer to shoot, but the pictures came out beautifully. After this experience, I took out a loan and bought a second body. Lesson learned!
 
Pinhole for a few dollars of oak wood and the aperture.

Not exactly a living, but sold a few prints at craft shows. Sort
of a retro look that people enjoy.

We have some DIY large format that were made for the cost of
a barrel lens and a bit of wood and glue. Used a regular film
holder.
Prognathous said:
Just curious... :-)

Prog.
Click to expand...
 
I think I paid 500.00 bucks for it with the lens, maybe a little more.

The funniest money I ever made with a cheap camera was about three years ago. I have all this very nice Sinar, Rodenstock, Schneider high end 4x5 gear but I bought, of all things, a digital Rebel for scouting shots. I would take it along on site visits to take previews of spaces.

One place I visited was an old bank building that had a vault that had been turned into a sitting room. I shot the rows of safe deposit boxes with the dReb. Put the shots on Alamy and that one shot has sold for close to 2.5K of licensing...

--

'We spend all of our lives pushing the buttons and pulling the levers found on the front panel of reality. How can we be so certain that there is also not a rear panel... one that only God can reach, and when He does flip an unseen switch or turn a dial that is out of our reach we see it as a Miracle?' JR
http://www.jimroofcreative.com
 
The most inexpensive camera I made money with was a Brownie Hawkeye in high school. And a Argus C3 35mm in 1951-52.
Believe I shot basketball games.
 
When I first started selling pictures to horse show participants (mid-90s), I was using a plain old Canon T50. That thing was a beast -- not really in size, but in weight (compared to modern day cameras) especially with heavy lenses. After that, I graduated to the EOS Rebel G and shot for a couple years just with that camera. Shooting with that Rebel required me to really know how to use the camera's manual setting. In other words, I had to know how to set up the camera to get the shot I wanted, rather than rely solely on my equipment. I later moved on to an Elan 7 and then jumped over to digital.

I remember once, a client asked me what type of camera I used. When I said "a Rebel G" they exclaimed in surprise: "My MOM has that camera!!" I still chuckle about that.
 
When I was in univrsity I bought, using school money, a Minolta Autocord 2 1/4 square twin lens reflex camera. Used it for a couple of years, and then when I left I sold it to myself.

After that, it was used for newspaper and magazine photos for several years.

BAK
 
walking to work, I caught the beginning of flames coming from the roof of a tall building...called 911, shot a roll, sold it to local newspaper, a priint got published.
--
charlesh
 
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