A photo shoot with a beautiful professional model dressed in thousands of dollars of couture with the interesting backdrop of the busy streets of Hong Kong and a world renown fashion photographer should mean you have just set the stage for some magic to be captured. Right?
What if the tool to capture this perfect scene was not only a cheap camera, but a kid’s cheap camera – the An Pan Man camera (Bread Superman camera) from Japan which boasts a whopping 0.3 megapixels. Not only that, the An Pan Man compliments the model before he actually takes the picture, allowing a lovely delay before the shutter clicks.
Can a professional photographer with years of experience using only the best cameras on the market create anything with this camera?
[REWIND: PETER HURLEY STYLE HEADSHOT LIGHTING ON THE CHEAP! HEADSHOT LIGHTING WITH A STROBE AND REFLECTORS]
Well it’s not about the camera, right?
The professional photographer taking up this DigitalRev challenge is Lara Jade. Lara is a fashion photographer who travels the world to capture images for an impressive list of publications. Lara was on a layover in Hong Kong for 6 hours and she was tasked to capture 6 different images from three different looks in that timeframe.
Can she do it? Well, I won’t give too much away, but watching here is both impressive and inspiring. The limitations of the camera were many – the little beast ate up numerous AA batteries, it had a tiny viewfinder that was hard to see, and of course, the miniscule amount of megapixels. The 21 minute video shows Lara at work and it truly is fascinating to watch her thought processes throughout the shoot. Unfamiliar with the area, she scans and spots the locations quickly and decisively, takes command of the situation and creates the vision she sees, even with the challenges she has to work with. She brings a level of confidence and creativity that shows her true talent. Lara even uses various props like a glass from a hotel to create interesting visual effects like the one below:
See the other 5 images and the process she goes through to create them in the video below.
Watch Lara Jade in Digital Rev’s Cheap Camera Challenge
It’s true you don’t need the fanciest equipment to make remarkable images. Pye has demonstrated this with articles such as our popular iPhone photo shoot (which you can see below). In our newest workshop DVD, Photography 101, we show you how to create amazing images with basic gear, not quite as basic as Lara’s An Pan Man camera, but you get the idea. Check it out here.
Get Connected!