For $5.99 plus tax I bought a highly used Canon Power Shot A70 out of the thrift store. Add to that a four pack of AA batteries for $1.25 plus tax and a borrowed flash memory card from the old Kodak DX3900 and we have a new shooter for $8.11 CDN.
Some (not very impressive) specs: 3.2 MP, 5.4-16.2mm (3X) f2.8-4.8 lens, separate eye-level finder that changes with the zoom, tiny LCD display on the back you can barely read the menu on even with glasses, and a few of the usual controls. All quite worn and weary from years of use. But it is a Canon.
Okay, full image size is 2048 x 1536, still about twice the size of the computer screen or 3X as big as the picture size I usually post. But is it any good? Well it was a bit reluctant to come back to life and a few of the controls are ‘iffy’ at times but I got it up and running on Automatic (it has the other typical shooting modes as well as scene modes and even movie). The biggest problem is a dark bluish line across the top of every image, obviously a failure of the sensor. Hey, this is a camera that dates from around 2003; that’s ancient on the digital camera timeline.

It was a heavily overcast day and most of the pictures needed some post-processing to help the colour balance and exposure, neither of which was correct in any shot. Here’s how overcast it was:
How sharp is the lens? Fairly sharp. Not excellent, not very good, just fair. Good enough for who it’s for, so to speak.
I haven’t tried any of the other shooting modes yet because the picture opportunities are so limited right now. Neither do I see anything in this camera’s functions and features that make it particularly interesting. This was just an experiment in cheap shooting, so to speak.
But here we have an example of … well, digital zooming in the post-shoot I guess. First picture is full frame shrunk down to 640×480, the second is a 640×480 sampling of the full frame:
I will probably shoot some more with this if the sun shines again. I have to say its biggest failing is that the shutter release (push-focus-snap) is incredibly slow. Not “we measured the milliseconds in the lab” slow but “you can miss the shot if the subject is moving” slow. Also the viewfinder is blurred due to the rigors of age. Still nicer than trying to compose on an LCD that appears blank because of the sunlight. Downloading the pictures is an exercise in slowness too, as you have to establish a live link via USB cable and the data transfer is pretty sluggish.
If you’re going thrift camera shopping a couple of things to look out for: the type of memory card (it can be hard or expensive to get the non-SD cards), and the brand of camera. I passed on one that was a make I’d never heard of because it probably wasn’t any good when it was new. But the old standby brands (Canon, Kodak, Fuji, Nikon, Olympus, Sony) are probably okay. Don’t expect to be able to memorize every model anyone ever made nor to find one specific camera you’re looking for. It’s more of a Zen thing.
And especially don’t spend too much money.