Cheap Camera Challenge

A cheap camera challenge involves a professional photographer being given a cheap, low-quality camera and the task of capturing the best photos they can with it. The challenge is used to illustrate how great photographs can be captured with not-so-great photography equipment, revealing that so much of what makes "great photography" is actually the photographer's eye and skills.

Watch Pro Photographers Try to Shoot with a $22 Bunny Camera

In a bit of a call back to the classic DigitalRev TV "Pro Tog Cheap Camera Challenge," YouTuber Jessica Kobeissi enlisted one of her professional photographer friends for a special photo challenge: get the best possible campaign/editorial photos using only a $22 bunny camera. Hilarity ensues...

BTS: What It’s Like Being on DigitalRev’s Cheap Camera Challenge

We've featured plenty of Pro Photographer Cheap Camera Challenges over the years, all of them informative, educational and entertaining to varying degrees. What we've never had before is the photographer's perspective. What's it like to be on the program? How does it go down? How much planning goes into it?

Thanks to Benjamin Von Wong and Silistudio we now have an answer to all of those questions and more.

Kai Gives Phillip Bloom a Barbie Camera in New DigitalRev Cheap Camera Challenge

Editor's Note: There is a bit of strong and suggestive language used in a few of the scenes.

The Pro Photog Cheap Camera Challenge is one of our favorite segments that the folks over at DigitalRev put together. Beyond just proving the point that it's the photographer, and not the camera, that makes great pictures, the episodes are fun to watch and often very educational.

In the past they've put everyone from David Hobby to Vincent Laforet to the test, but this time they decided to up the ante. The victim this time around is world-class cinematographer Phillip Bloom, who will be embarking on this challenge with a not-so-capable Barbie camera in tow.

Vincent Laforet Rediscovers the Joy of Film During ‘Cheap Camera’ Challenge

In their most recent "Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera" challenge, DigitalRev managed to get world-renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet to participate. Known best, perhaps, for his tilt-shift work, Laforet was asked to trade in his 1D X and 45mm tilt-shift lens for a Canon A2e and Lensbaby composer.

A 2-Megapixel Buzz Lightyear Camera in the Hands of a Pro Photographer

Give James Bond, Jack Bauer or Chuck Norris a spork, and they'll figure out a way to overpower bad guys wielding guns. What happens when you give a seasoned photographer a cheap digital camera designed for toddlers?

That's what Kai Wong and DigitalRev did recently. They flew in David Hobby of Strobist and gave him a 2-megapixel Buzz Lightyear camera and three cheapo flash units. Hobby was then tasked with shooting 5 challenges in 5 locations of 5 subjects, using his resourcefulness to make the best images he could with the uber-low-end gear.

Zack Arias Attempts Pro Photos with a Cheap Camera

The idea that the camera doesn't make the photographer is, most will agree, a sufficiently dead and overly beaten horse of a subject. It's nice, however, to actually see the concept in action and taken to an extreme. Of course you could give an enthusiast a several thousand dollar camera and see what effect it has, but the people over at DigitalRev take the opposite approach: they give a crappy camera to a pro photographer.