One Photographer Shoots With the Cheapest Camera He Could Find

If you bought the cheapest interchangeable lens camera you could find, how would the images with it come out? We often rely on high-resolution sensors, but if you're looking at trying photography, they aren't necessary.

The discussion of whether gear matters or not has been done to death and any answers to the question that is absolute, is likely incomplete. By which I mean, gear is important in some situations and unimportant in others. One of the situations it isn't important, however, is the first dipping of a toe in photography's waters.

If anyone asks me about trying photography, or says they have always thought they'd enjoy it, I would recommend the same thing: buy an extremely cheap interchangeable lens camera (ILC) and a fast prime. My first camera was a Canon 350D with a Canon 50mm f/1.8 attached. It was pretty cheap back then, now it's pennies. With that, you can create some great-looking images and get a reasonable understanding of whether it's something you want to pursue. 

In this video, Mattias Burling shows that with a Canon 300D and 28mm f/2.8, you can create beautiful imagery. No, you won't be able to heavily crop, your raw files won't have much flex to them, and your dynamic range might be underwhelming, but you can create great images all the same. For under $100, you could have a digital ILC capable of taking images any photographer would be proud of. That's worth a try in my book.