YOUR FIRST CAMERA

RB 67 bought in 1973.

I remember borrowing a camera in 3rd grade for a classs trip. Seemed like the thing to have ..can't remember if the film was ever developed etc. My brother got a 124 Instamatic for his birthday . I was very proud for him. Seemed liked big boy present. many years later, I'm 18 . on a whim. I ask to borrow a camera from Dad for a "road trip" to Harrisburg. It was a music gig for the band but it was 2-3 hours away etc. Rather than let me use his camera, he let me use what he called his cheap back-up.

 

 

 

His regular was also a Tower mdel ..but made in Germany an Iloca ?? I did manage a roll of slides most of the daylight pics were ok . One shot . no flash at night has the Fender Amp light. Another 5 years pass and my Dad, a high school science teacher, changed jobs and there was a need for a phtography teacher. I benfitted from this too, and I bought my first real camera a Yashica FX2 second hand in three 25,00 dollar payments from the local camera store where I soon became a regular customer. The rest , as they say is history.... Some few years later I left this in my car for a weekend and well, I forgot about it until a week later .. when I remembered, it had been stolen .

 

 

 

 

 

I certainly cut my teeth on this model and therer are many like it from a similar mold. You can pound nails with them!

Edited February 13, 2021 by chuck_foreman|1

AGFA agfamatic 2000 pocket

The first camera I had was a Kodak 110 as a boy. Later got an old Kodak Pony II, which had a good 4-element lens and taught the EV system.

My first serious camera was an Olympus OM-1 (1982).

First digital used was a Sony Mavica (1997).

I was given my first camera, a FED-2 (type D), by my father who bought it in Arkhangelsk FSU in early 1960s. Stil have it, of course :)

 

 

Then I bought my first system camera, an Olympus OM-2n in 1980. First time I fell for an advertisement (it could read the light during exposure, you see...). Still have that one too.

My first camera was a fixed focus Brownie. It did nothing to interest me in photography. The first decent camera I ever used was a Mamiya 35mm SLR that I got issued by the govt. And trained on. I later bought a Minolta 110 SLR Mk II to use instead of my issued Nikon Fm2 that took up too much space in a backpack for work trips in outback Alaska.

My first proper camera was a Zorki 4 with the F2 Jupiter lens.Superb introduction, no light meter but guesswork on exposure was very successful and I had minimal wasted shots.I had it for five years ,during which I shared a house with journalists and would be dragged out at odd hours when no staff photographer was available.My reward was 2 Guineas per shot used ! A lot in these days as good wage was about £15 per week. A lot of cameras came afterwards but I regret parting with the Zorki.

When I was a child, the family camera was a Kodak Brownie Starmite 127-film model. I snapped my first photo with it when I was about 7 years old, and the picture is still in my mom’s photo album.

Fast forward (through a 110-film insta-matic) to my 16th birthday in September 1982. I had developed an interest in “serious photography” and my parents bought me a kit from the local catalogue showroom. It was a Nikon FG with a Series E 50mm f:1.8 lens. I still have the first pictures I took, as well as the negatives which I recently scanned.

I don’t have the camera any longer. In fact, I returned it when it failed twice under warranty. But I still stuck with Nikon for 12 years until my interest in photography was reduced to using a good point-and-shoot 35mm film camera (Rollei Prego 90 which I recently discovered in a storage box).

First camera, a Vredeborch box 6x9 with the yellow filter if needed, at about 8 years old. Then a Brownie Hawkeye, and eventually a used Retina II which I consider my first serious camera; I was 10. First camera I bought myself, a Pentax K-1000 that is still with me, along a lot of lenses obtained through many years.

My first camera was some kind of 17.5mm Hit-type camera back in the 50's. I developed the film in my closet. My first "real" camera was a Kodak Duoflex IV (maybe the start of a love affair with TLRs) whose film was also developed and printed in my closet with a Kodak Tri-Chem pack with Velox paper. The first camera I bought for myself was a brand new Nikon F Photomic T with 58 Micro-Nikor, 50 f/1.4, 100 f/2.5, and a 250 f/4 all wrangled through a friend from a PX in Japan for the lordly sum total of $267.

Kodak baby Brownie 127 film camera

Yes my first were with a Tri-chem pack and Velox paper. I had a contact printer from Goodwill.

 

I think after not so long, D-76 for film, and Dektol for paper. That was summer, and I think I got my first enlarger as a Christmas present in the same year.

As did many people, I started with a Brownie. A Brownie Hawkeye I received as a gift when I was ten. I didnt buy one myself until I was 34. That was a Minolta XG7, which I actually wore out. Then on to the truckload of cameras, mostly film, that I have now. My current favorite is a Minolta XD11, so I didnt move far from the beginning. Digital? A Nikon D7000.

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Target Six-20, a gift from the parents circa 1950. Eight shots on a roll of 620 film.

 

I still have it -- it even still works!

My very first toy camera was a Mycro (14x14mm) which taught me photography (choose speed, aperture, guess distance - develop films - make BW slides on "safety film" by contact under red light etc.)

Then, my first serious camera was a Yashica Electro35 bought in 1967, because of its revolutionnary (analog) electronic shutter.

 

POLKa

Edited February 17, 2021 by polka

My first camera was a Kodak X-15 Instamatic. I took it on our family vacation to Europe and packed a total of three 126 cartridges for the trip which, at the time, seemed like more film than anyone could possibly use in one trip--72 shots!! I still have many of the pictures. My first serious camera was a Pentax ME Super that a very good friend 'loaned' me back in 1989 but said that I didn't need to give it back anytime soon. He just asked me a couple of months ago if I still had it (I do!) and said that he still didn't need it back.

My very first camera was a "Beau Brownie" box camera my father had had. For the time it was a pretty advanced box camera, with as I recall, a doublet lens, three waterhouse stops, and a carry case. It was all done in art deco blue. For all that it did not make very sharp pictures. The next was a plastic Imperial flash 127 job. My sister and I both got these, which were free premiums my parents got for opening bank accounts. A terrible little thing, it actually took tolerably sharp pictures and its built-in flash worked.

 

My first serious camera I got when I was 12, about to go to a Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado: a Sawyer's Mark IV TLR. A relabeled Topcon, it used 127 film, had a really nice 2.8 Topcor lens, and took quite good pictures. The viewfinder, with a flip-up magnifier, was decently sharp too. It was stolen a few years later. But it was a pretty nice machine while it lasted. The square 127 "super slides" fit in a regular slide projector, which was a nice bonus. I couldn't afford as much film as I'd have liked, but for a few years, Christmas and birthday presents were taken care of. It was LP records and Ektachrome ...and flash bulbs. It had a neat flash that attached to a bayoneted bracket on a lens, and it made amazingly good exposures. I still have a lot of slides, but alas, old Ektachrome does not age very well. Here's a link to that camera. It really was beautifully made:

 

The Sawyer’s Mark IV – A Miniature Rolleiflex 2.8 - Casual Photophile

Kodak Instamatic 25. First "real" camera Zenit B and 58mm Helios

The very first camera I used (once) was my aunt's,4,5x6 folder. I still remember it in my hands at 7-8, but not the brand

or model.

My first camera immediately afterwards (around 1954-55) was a Bencini Comet 3. Unfortunately I no longer have it, although I do have my brother's Comet 2.

The first camera I purchased (1965) was a Vöigtlander Vito CLR. I still have it, but it no longer works.

My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic 104 that I got in 1966 not long after getting married and starting college. It documented plenty of family events, trips and good times together. Those flash cubes sure seemed expensive. Sometime I either figured out or was told that leaving an expended flash cube in would slow the shutter speed enough to improve exposure on back-lit pictures. I suspect that was what triggered an interest in photography that carried forward. My second camera was a Pentax KX acquired in Japan during a visit with my brother-in-law in 1976. I so enjoyed the pictures and slides he created with a Pentax K2 that I took a step up from that Instamatic. Edited February 26, 2021 by john_smullen|1

At age 8 I was given my father's Kodak 35 rangefinder with a GE meter. Not the easiest camera ever, but I loved it.

Kodak Hawkeye Instamatic II mail ordered with cereal box tops.

At age 8 I was given my father's Kodak 35 rangefinder with a GE meter. Not the easiest camera ever, but I loved it.

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Not quite 8, and not given, but I borrowed my father's Canon rangefinder from when I was about 10.

 

I have pictures from my 5th grade class, and used it for yearbook photography 7th and 8th grade.

I even have pictures from 8th grade PE class, which seems to be a place where I might not have

thought about taking a fancy camera. (I did have the case, though.)

 

I used it for some years in college, until I bought a Nikon FM and AI 35/2.0 at the end of 3rd year.

 

Then I borrowed the Canon again, so I could get some black and white pictures, with Ektachrome

in the FM. I had a 50 foot roll of Tri-X, and the last 36 exposure roll from that, then stayed

in the camera for 30 years. (More than half its life at that point.)

 

Since my father has now gone digital and isn't interested in film, I now have the Canon again.

 

 

My high school, the day after the last day of school, on Anscochrome 200 bought for half price,

processing included, and taken with above mentioned Canon rangefinder.

 

My father bought it new when I was one, so it is the first camera I ever knew, taking all of our

family pictures until he bought a Canon Pellix.

My first was Halina 1000 which my granny bought me from the local chemists. I still have it somewhere.

 

The first camera I bought myself was a secondhand Pentax MV-1 with a 50mm f2. In some ways no more glamorous than the Halina in 1987, as Canon’s space age Eos range arrived. It was sold long ago, but I recently bought one and plan to shoot my next roll of film with it - Green for Go!

My first camera was an Ensign Ful-Vue presented to me by my parents on my 11th birthday, My father was a keen amateur photographer who compiled an album featuring the early years of each of his three children, which each of us still have. He used a Certo Super Sport Dolly, a mid-range folding 120 roll film camera popular in the 1940's, though his dream was to acquire a new-fangled Braun Paxette. Sadly he passed away before the dream was realised, and I came to inherit the camera at the age of thirteen. So, the Certo was really my first "proper camera", and it's still in my possession, showing signs of wear from it's use through my teenage years.I have no photographs from that period, but I'll post a photograph from the camera copied from "my" album showing the photographer as a young man, accompanied by his mother, along with a pic of the camera.