crappiest camera and lens what did you do with it?

[jnantz]

we all have them, im not talking the $10,000 ebony with a Schneider XXL ... but the opposite
a peeled Moroccan leather, rusty parts, leaky bellows (with peeling tape to fix the leaks ),
lenses that are scratched, separated, loose, moldy-barn-finds ...
you probably already know what I am talking about .. a real piece of junk .. what's yours? did you use it? (and secretly like the results)?

[BrianShaw]

we all have them, im not talking the $10,000 ebony with a Schneider XXL ... but the opposite
a peeled Moroccan leather, rusty parts, leaky bellows (with peeling tape to fix the leaks ),
lenses that are scratched, separated, loose, moldy-barn-finds ...
you probably already know what I am talking about .. a real piece of junk .. what's yours? did you use it? (and secretly like the results)?

Great topic! For me it is a 1930’s era Kodak Duo 620. The one I got off of eBay was inexpensive but beat up and reeked of WD-40!in the shutter. Once it was aired out and the smell dissipated, it has become one of my most favorite user cameras. Not quite a piece of junk, though, and not LfF either.

[Peter Mounier]

I somehow inherited a Canon AE-1 with a nail through the prism. Obviously beyond repair, I decided to have some fun with it while doing a Zone System test.

http://www.mouniergiclee.com/StillLife_wCanon.jpg

[Tin Can]

I don't buy junk

I buy CHEAP

Yashica A X 2

shot right out my front door not a pose

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51355749967_96cef6f83d_b.jpg (https://www.flickr.com/gp/tincancollege/2V7u54uuK8)Girl on bike_Original (Edited) (https://www.flickr.com/gp/tincancollege/2V7u54uuK8) by TIN CAN COLLEGE (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tincancollege/), on Flickr

[Michael R]

Sharpness bourgeois bla bla fuzzy concept la la la boop dee doop.

[paulbarden]

Sharpness bourgeois bla bla fuzzy concept la la la boop dee doop.

I need a camera that does that! LOLOLOL

[ic-racer]

My cheapest ($5.00) most beat up camera and 50 cent lens...
What did I do with it? I got them working again!

245947
245948
245949

[BrianShaw]

I need a camera that does that! LOLOLOL

I’ve got just the camera for you. Actually, all you need is one of my M42 lenses!

[Conrad . Marvin]

Yard sale wood camera. Incomplete, not able to rebuild at that time. I still have a box of parts that I used over the years for repairs, etc.

[xkaes]

I somehow inherited a Canon AE-1 with a nail through the prism. Obviously beyond repair, I decided to have some fun with it while doing a Zone System test.

http://www.mouniergiclee.com/StillLife_wCanon.jpg

Not the first Napoleonic camera (AKA, "BLOWN APART").

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1605199825

245953

[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!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/33979199018_ae5096ae90_b.jpg

[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/antiquelenses/softfocuslenses.html

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

http://forum.mflenses.com/meniscus-lenses-t63197,start,30.html

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

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

http://tonopahpictures.0catch.com/150Eidy/12inchDarlotLandscape.html

https://diediemustdive.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/adapting-classic-lenses-to-modern-cameras/

https://www.shutterbug.com/content/soft-focus-revisited-digitally-how-make-your-own-soft-focus-lens-one-i%E2%80%99ve-used-40-years

[Ron in Arcata California]

Don't forget Miroslav Tichý

https://fstoppers.com/natural-light/photographer-snaps-nearly-hundred-photos-day-homemade-camera-4848

[monochromeFan]

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!

And to think, thats their main SELLING point..

[jnantz]

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!

Have you ever seen victor milin’s holga photographs, stunning!
—
I like using a pre war Agfa sure shot and a strut camera whose door doesn’t want to open. They make nice photos, the sure shot allows 1/2 frame on B2 (120) has a yellow filter and the oof areas are really pleasing the strut camera I love to put something self coated in it, the sharp in the middle and soft like a petsval and it didn’t cost 2grand!

[Pete Oakley]

Coming over here nocking our beer mats, it's a disgrace. :D

[Pete Oakley]

Coming over here nicking our beer mats, it's a disgrace. :D

[paulbarden]

I must have an outlier Holga - it doesn't have any light leaks, anywhere. *shrug*

[Serge S]

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!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/33979199018_ae5096ae90_b.jpg

Looks good:)

[ericantonio]

Sharpness bourgeois bla bla fuzzy concept la la la boop dee doop.

Sounds like one of them fancy Lomo cameras with a butchered Leica Summicron attached to it via hot glue, prayers, and hairpins. It'll be the next Insta/tiktok artist to go millionaire.

[ericantonio]

Does anyone NOT REMEMBER the internet early days of "Plungercam?" Some guy with a hasselblad. I wish the website was still up. My love of cheap cameras and lenses come from working in and studios. Everything was hyper real. Too real, too sharp. Then Zone VI started selling the Holgas. I was hooked back in 1988.

I remember one of my photographer friends back then, we were printing in a lab after work, and I said "hey great shots, is that a band?? Yah, I used my Holga in a club. Those guys are called "red hot chili peppers". Are they wearing....dick socks????" I wish she published those...

Even though I have fantastic lenses, I still have a love of the memory that images make. I guess seeing super tack sharp photos was a turnoff but it was for print production so we needed them sharp.
I still have my Spiratone Portragon. And a real Diana not a recent copy.

[domaz]

I love my Omega 120 (http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Omega_120) (the original, not Koni variety) and on outside appearance it looks like a crappy bizarre camera. Missing some paint, the integrated lens cap is broken off etc. When I got it the rangefinder didn't work among other things, but it was a very simple camera to repair and the lens has really nice bokeh for being "just a Tessar". It's an odd camera in terms of film advance though, it only gets 9 shots on 6x7 and the frame start out really close together and get farther apart towards the end of the roll. I have no idea if this was poor design or my camera.

[jnantz]

Does anyone NOT REMEMBER the internet early days of "Plungercam?" Some guy with a hasselblad. I wish the website was still up. My love of cheap cameras and lenses come from working in and studios. Everything was hyper real. Too real, too sharp. Then Zone VI started selling the Holgas. I was hooked back in 1988.

I remember one of my photographer friends back then, we were printing in a lab after work, and I said "hey great shots, is that a band?? Yah, I used my Holga in a club. Those guys are called "red hot chili peppers". Are they wearing....dick socks????" I wish she published those...

Even though I have fantastic lenses, I still have a love of the memory that images make. I guess seeing super tack sharp photos was a turnoff but it was for print production so we needed them sharp.
I still have my Spiratone Portragon. And a real Diana not a recent copy.

hey Eric, plungercam, that was Mark Tucker, pre Havana in the early days of the Ape-hug .. :)

[ericantonio]

hey Eric, plungercam, that was Mark Tucker, pre Havana in the early days of the Ape-hug .. :)

ding ding ding!!! That's it!!! You have a fantastic memory. Now I remember it...Tucker. Yep.

[jnantz]

ding ding ding!!! That's it!!! You have a fantastic memory. Now I remember it...Tucker. Yep.

:) glad I can help ... I remember stories of his tying camera's bellows up like a pretzel, and mixing batches ( for his polaroid 55 film ) of sulfite up in his blender and then making margaritas LOL
he makes some impressive portraits is all I gotta say, no matter his methods!