Cheap Cameras

When the best camera is the one you have

It was the third or fourth day of my second long travel stint in Asia. The first had lasted a year, this one was at this stage, indefinite. Before leaving Sydney, I’d considered upgrading my camera. I had an early 90’s Minolta SLR that while quite decent, was by now well travelled and I’d wondered if the time had come to replace it. I ultimately decided not to do so, and so there I was, watching a traditional cultural show with camera in hand. Needless to say, the camera broke. I’m not sure what happened other than that it stopping advancing the shutter.

I figured at first it was incorrectly loaded film even though it wasn’t the beginning of the roll. Willing to sacrifice a frame or three, I opened it up and checked the film was in place properly. It was. The only other thing I could think was that it was the battery although it was a fairly new battery so this was unlikely. The next day I took it to a camera shop that did repairs and they couldn’t fix it either, They offered to send it to the Minolta service centre, but that was in Singapore and I was in Bangkok.

There was no knowing how long this would take so it was not really an option. While I didn’t have anywhere I desperately needed to be in a hurry, I had planned to head south to visit a friend who lived on Koh Tao, before returning to Bangkok and flying to Nepal in order to travel overland to Tibet before it got too cold on the mountain passes.

As was normal in those days, I found myself chatting to a random traveller and I mentioned my broken camera, and she told me that Langkawi in Malaysia was a duty-free port, and it was possible to take a ferry there from Satun in the very south of Thailand. Seeing as I was heading south anyway, I decided to do that which would let me buy a new camera a bit cheaper, and serve as a chance to renew my Thai visa. The only question remaining was what to do about a short trip to Ayutthaya we were doing before I headed south.

Khao Sanh Rd beckoned, or more specifically, one of the photo developing places that lined the street, and also sold cheap cameras. The plan was to grab something cheap that was good enough for a few snapshots to tide me over until I got to Langkawi. I chose one of the cheapest they had. It was only a couple hundred baht, had a name I’d never heard of before and haven’t since, and fit in a pocket. It’d do for a few weeks.

Years later, the saying “the best camera is the one you have with you” was popularised to describe an early iPhone photo app. For me, I was living that adage long before anyone knew what a smartphone was. At least for a fortnight or so.

Almost ten years after that time with the cheap camera, I wrote a fairly successful photography blog. It was getting 1000 unique visitors a day and I had regularly had offers for brand partnerships from people in the photography industry. One such company had a software that still exists today although the company has changed hands a few times. I already had one of their applications, and they mentioned that they were launching a new piece of software which would come with a relatively hefty licence fee, and asked if I’d like a free copy to review. The various filters and effects they offered made photographs look pretty much like the photos in this article do. These photos have been scanned on a high resolution film scanner but are otherwise untouched, appearing exactly the same as the prints that I got back 25 years ago.

In the end I made it down to Langkawi and came away with a nice new Canon SLR and a couple of lenses. I’d actually gone in with the intention of buying Nikon but all the shops seemed to favour Canon, with a much better selection and better prices, and I’m still using Canon to this day. And I ended up hanging on to that cheap pocket camera for a couple of years. I don’t think I ever used it again, but it was small enough that it just stayed in the bottom of my bag in case it was ever needed.

I also made a return trip to Ayutthaya a couple of years later with my Canon cameras and slide film and photographed it more comprehensively. There are a few holes in my coverage though, so next time I’m in Bangkok, I’m going to take a couple of days to head the hour or so north to Ayutthaya and finish the job.

Nowadays where everyone has a high quality camera in their pocket, cheap cameras are more of an enthusiast thing. People deliberately choosing the lo-fi, vintage look. Back in the film days, the average person would shoot 2 rolls of film per year. They certainly weren’t using high end cameras and film to do it with. At the end of the day, you can have fun and record your memories with any camera. I had a great time for those couple of weeks with a cheap camera. Great adventures with great people photographed on a cheap camera.