I've been following the guys over at
Digital Rev TV for a long time. They have an entire series of YouTube videos in which they give a professional photographer a cheap camera and see if they can still take good images. They gave David Hobby and Buzz Lightyear camera. They gave Chase Jarvis a camera fashioned out of Legos. They gave Sean Lee Davies an old 1.2 MP Nokia camera phone. Not surprisingly, all these guys were able to capture great images.
The best one I've seen is the one where they give award-winning photographer Vincent Laforet an old Canon A2E. It's a film camera and has no preview screen. They put an inexpensive Lensbaby Composer lens on it and gave him two rolls of film. The results are quite impressive. Watching the way he works and the logic behind his choices are truly enlightening.
The purpose of this series is to display the old adage "The best camera you have is the one you have with you."
To see Vincent in action check out the video below.
