I've been selling camera gear for a long time. First as a photographer who upgraded too often, then as the owner of MF Camera Store — a specialty shop in Historic Folsom, California focused on Leica, Sony, Nikon, Hasselblad, and Fujifilm. I've bought and sold hundreds of cameras and lenses. And for most of that time, every single platform I used found a way to take a piece of what wasn't theirs.
The tax on every photographer
Here's the math that finally broke me. You've got a Leica M10 that you want to sell for $4,000. Fair price. Good condition. You list it on eBay. It sells. Then eBay takes 12.9%. That's $516 gone. PayPal takes another 2.9% plus $0.30. That's another $116. You just lost $632 on a camera that never left your hands — and you did all the work of listing it, photographing it, packaging it, and shipping it.
Facebook Marketplace feels like the alternative. No fees. But you know what you get instead? Three lowball offers in the first hour, a guy who agrees to meet you at Starbucks and doesn't show up, and a follow-up message two weeks later asking "is this still available." The friction is different. The waste is the same.
"You just lost $632 on a camera that never left your hands — and you did all the work."
Craigslist is still out there. Fred Miranda has a classifieds section that the serious community uses. DPReview has forums. But none of them were built for this. They're general-purpose platforms tolerating photographers, not platforms built around how photographers actually buy and sell gear.
What I saw running a camera store
Running MF Camera Store taught me something important: the photography community is unusually honest and unusually informed. When a photographer describes a lens as "Excellent," they mean it. When someone asks about shutter count, they know exactly what they're asking and why it matters. When a buyer wants to inspect a body before committing, that's not distrust — that's the right instinct.
I watched photographers come into the store who had already done more research than most professional buyers I've met. They knew the history of the specific camera line. They'd read every forum thread. They'd watched every review video. What they didn't have was a platform that respected that knowledge and gave them a fair place to transact.
The idea that kept coming back
For a few years the idea would surface every few months. A simple peer-to-peer marketplace, just for camera gear, with a flat listing fee and no commission. Photographers pay a small fee to list — enough to keep the quality of listings high and filter out spam — and then keep every dollar when their gear sells. No percentage. No sliding scale. No "final value fee" mystery charge.
The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. The used camera gear market is massive. The Leica M system alone has tens of thousands of lenses in circulation changing hands every year. Sony FE glass, Canon RF bodies, Fujifilm X-system cameras — the secondary market for all of it dwarfs what's available new. And yet there was no dedicated place for it that treated photographers like the knowledgeable adults they are.
The part that actually made it different
Once I committed to building it, I kept asking myself: what's the real problem with buying used camera gear from a stranger? The answer is almost never the price. It's the uncertainty. You can read "Excellent — minimal use" all day, but until you've seen the lens in real light, checked the glass, tested the autofocus, you're trusting a description written by someone with a financial incentive to describe it generously.
That's why we built Video Meet into the platform. Before any money changes hands, buyers and sellers can jump on a video call — no download, no app install, directly from the listing page. You can ask the seller to shoot wide open, check the corners, look for focus hunting. You can inspect the body under raking light to see if there's more wear than the photos show. It's as close to an in-person inspection as you can get without being in the same room.
"Until you've seen the lens in real light, you're trusting a description written by someone with a financial incentive to be generous."
We also built an AI-assisted listing writer. Not because photographers can't write, but because writing a good listing description that's genuinely useful to buyers takes time — and most photographers would rather be shooting. Describe your gear in plain language, hit Generate, and get a professional description that covers the details buyers actually care about: optical condition, mechanical feel, what's included, what to know.
Why now
The photography community has been underserved by general-purpose marketplaces for long enough. The gear that moves through this community — Leica M glass, medium format systems, vintage Nikon glass, Hasselblad XCD lenses — deserves a home that understands what it is and treats it accordingly.
Aperture.market is that home. It launched in 2026 with a simple promise: a $0.99 flat listing fee and zero commission, forever. No percentage of your sale going to a platform that didn't help you buy that lens or care for it for ten years.
If you sell a $5,000 Leica lens on Aperture.market, you keep $5,000. You pay $0.99 to list it, and that's it. The buyer pays you directly — through PayPal Goods & Services, which gives both sides protection — and the transaction is between two photographers who both know what they're looking at.
What comes next
We're just getting started. The catalogue is growing. Every week more serious photographers find the platform through word of mouth — because once you sell your first lens here and keep the full amount, you don't go back.
If you have gear collecting dust that you know deserves a better home: list it. It takes about five minutes. If you're looking for something specific — that 35mm Summilux, that 90mm Elmarit, that Sony 85mm GM — browse the listings. Set a search alert. The right piece is out there, and the person selling it probably cares about it as much as you will.
This is what a camera marketplace should feel like.
— Lakshman
Founder, Aperture.market
Owner, MF Camera Store — Historic Folsom, CA