crappiest camera and lens what did you do with it?

[paulbarden]

A few years ago a friend gave me a badly damaged 105mm Schneider Xenotar lens in a barrel. The front element was badly scuffed up - it looked as if someone had taken steel wool to the glass! I mounted it in a shutter, put it on my Intrepid 4x5 and use it as a kind of "soft focus" lens (with vignetting, as its usable image circle isn't enough to properly cover 4x5). I like what I get from it - It's got a specific feel.

Oh, and this is a Wet Plate Collodion negative - you know the stuff: inferior orthochromatic crap, unfit for modern photographic applications!

[Kevin Crisp]

My first "real" camera -- and it almost doesn't qualify as that -- was an Exa Jr. of my father's which I found in the front hall closet. It is hard to say anything good about it, but it got me hooked on photography and darkroom work. No reflex finder, so you had to look down through the pop up hood at a ground glass. The shutter speeds, such as they were, were controlled by a lever that looked like what the conductor would use to release the brakes on a cable car. As I recall, they maxed out at a modest 1/150. You could find tune that by pulling the lever back and getting either 1/125 or 1/100th.

When if proved essentially useless for working on the school paper I got my hands on an original Pentax Spotmatic. (Just like Ringo.) Superb ergonomics with a viewfinder that was hardly state of the art but my eyes were better then.

[Mark Sampson]

A friend gave me a Seagull TLR. Mechanically it was no Rollei, but I used it for a few rolls of film back around 2006. The lens was unsharp at any aperture or focus distance, just a bad lens; certainly the worst I've seen on an adjustable camera. My plastic Agfa Isola had better image quality.
So I put it in a box and eventually gave it away.

[Dugan]

A "Brand 17" 4x5 camera with a cracked pot-metal body.
JB Weld didn't help.
Heavy, clunky boat anchor, but it had a cool handle.
Couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

[rfesk]

I once purchased a 5x7 camera made by the Keith Camera Company. Couldn't believe how crude it seemed to be. Extremely stiff bellows, pin holes, focus wheel gears wouldn't stay on the tracks etc. A prior owner had repainted the original silver paint rather crudely with more silver paint which covered several cracks in the wood which had been repaired.

Since then I have repurposed quite a few parts of the camera for different purposes. Even the wood which was mahogany has been reused.

[John Layton]

A few years back I designed and taught a course I'd named "Yard Sale Cameras."

I showed up at the first class session with a box, which I shook up a few times for good effect...then dumped out a pile of cameras - all of them broken, and consisting of a rogues gallery of old Argus, Mercury, Bullet, Agfa, Kodak Brownie, etc. etc. - all roll film, 127's, 120's, 116's, 616's.

These cameras had some very unique features...including cracked lenses, broken shutters, torn, broken, and sprung non functional shutters, frozen focus controls, inoperable/stuck aperture controls, etc. etc.

The students in this (advanced level) class each chose a camera to take home and, being prohibited from fixing them (would have been practically impossible in most cases), were instead tasked with figuring out how to use each their cameras "unique features and qualities" to their best and most creative advantage. Some of the results were nothing short of amazing!

[jnantz]

I had an argus 35mm camera that were pretty crappy it was and AF I think, might be the crappiest I owned. a friend told me it had that 1930s aesthetic im not sure what that means but it was no machine age belini

[Paul Ron]

i think this was intended for real junk cameras bought new, not old decrepid cameras dug up from the grave.

holgas! leaking light so bad the entire camera had to be wrapped in electric tape once loaded with film. destination... statan island garbage dump!

[Tin Can]

1978 I was MC mechanic

I was hired when I made a Bultaco run in minutes

The shop had given up

Part 2

How many photographers admit Autism?

and why not

[xkaes]

A few years ago a friend gave me a badly damaged 105mm Schneider Xenotar lens in a barrel. The front element was badly scuffed up - it looked as if someone had taken steel wool to the glass! I mounted it in a shutter, put it on my Intrepid 4x5 and use it as a kind of "soft focus" lens (with vignetting, as its usable image circle isn't enough to properly cover 4x5). I like what I get from it - It's got a specific feel.

You got it.

Some of these shots were taken with very old, very simple lenses from very old, very broken cameras -- very cheaply, I might add. Websites like these can be hard to find on the web because if you search for "close-up lenses" or "supplementary filters", you undoubtedly end up with tons of macro shots.

http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/eos350d_meniscus.html

https://antiquecameras.net/antiquele...cuslenses.html

http://galactinus.net/vilva/retro/meniscus_bw.html

http://forum.mflenses.com/meniscus-l...,start,30.html

http://www.johnnyoptic.com/tutorial1.cgi

http://forum.mflenses.com/meniscus-lenses-t63197.html

http://tonopahpictures.0catch.com/15...Landscape.html

https://diediemustdive.wordpress.com...odern-cameras/

https://www.shutterbug.com/content/s...-used-40-years