I've done a few things with a digital camera, and I doubt it needs a hugely expensive one. Get square-on to a brick wall, take the picture, and then a lot of fiddling in picture editor to get it with edges that will tile. It sounds like that last will be the tricky part for you. For a brick wall, there might be a lot you can do with the procedural shaders in P5 and P6. And I've tried making a planked floor out of very elongated tiles. It worked sort of OK, but grain patterning tended to line up across plank edges.