Your first "serious" camera... and its influence

Inspired by posters on the "10 things I think" thread talking about their first

SLRs, and hopefully a slight return to the "Classic camera roots" threads too.

I've a notion that the first camera you really use and value stamps an imprint

on your future photography habits, not to mention camera tastes, for better

and/or worse.

Me: Zorki 4K, bought for peanuts in a second-hand shop nearly 20 years ago. Prior to that I'd had several cheap point & shoots but had admired a friend's Praktica SLR, which (then) looked impossibly sophisticated and artistic. I chose the Zorki because it was cheap, knew nothing of its origins or how to work it, got a 5-minute crash course in loading film from the shop owner then stumbled upon the rest. I probably used 2 shutter speeds for the whole of the first year and was wholly ignorant of film speed, depth of field etc. - it's a wonder I got any pictures at all. But when the images did come out, they had a depth and clarity I hadn't previously expected from my own photography.

 

I think this camera has had a lasting effect on my attitudes to photography and to cameras. Off the top of my head, here's a few things I can blame on it:

 

1. I like heavy cameras, with lots of dull chrome and with visible signs of having been screwed together by hand on a darkened factory floor. The boxier, the better. None of that round-cornered ergonomic nonsense.

 

2. I like really noisy shutters. In my mind, the thwack of an old SLR shutter is the satisfying sound of something being captured.

 

3. I have a lasting fascination with postwar Soviet cameras. Partly this is historical/cultural interest, but mainly it's because FSU cameras are so good at #1 and #2.

 

4. I love rangefinders. There are very likely easier ways to focus, but I don't care. I still recall the delight of discovering what that fuzzy light spot in the viewfinder was actually doing.

 

5. I love used and old cameras of all kinds. The Zorki was the first second-hand camera I ever bought, and the surprise of finding it actually did the job, and how well it did it, has engendered a rose-coloured world-view of vintage cameras in general. Partly it's the mechanical and build quality, but it's also the knowledge that your portable seeing eye was once another person's, and another's before that, and so on. I like to imagine the multiplicity of things each camera has seen in its lifetime. Pre-owned is good.

 

Anyone else?

My first "real" camera was a Petri 7s rangefinder that I bought when I graduated from high school. I think it was that cool looking ring-shaped meter that grabbed me. It served me well for almost four years of college, including a couple of summers in Europe until I had an uncle pick up a Nikomat FTN for me in Japan during my senior year. I've pretty much stuck to Nikon SLRs ever since (I still have the Nikomat) although I did buy another 7s on Ebay for nostalgic reasons. My current, primary film body is a Nikon F3HP.

 

Since my undergraduate years were spent at UC Berkeley from 1964 to 1968, my Petri helped me learn the basics of street photography, which I'm still drawn to except that I'm not quite as comfortable with it as I was in my younger years. I'm not sure how much that has to do with me and how much it has to do with today's environment.

Yashica FX-103 Super with a 50mm given to me by my father.

My first camera with some "possibilities" was the Zeiss Contina. It had a Pantar 50mm/2.8 lens that was quite decent in performance. After several years of using this camera, I wanted a wide angle lens, and instead of finding one for the Contina, I bought a Canon AE-1. This was the start of many years of Canon lenses and cameras purchases and use.

My first SLR was a PETRI FT with a 50MM F 1.8 lens. It cost the princely sum of $129 plus tax in 1970. This camera saw me through the early years of my hobby without a hiccup. Stopped down to F5.6, the Petri lens wasn't bad either.

 

 

By 1972 I had saved enough for a black Nikkormat FTN. This cost $200 wholesale through a professional discount(my friend's father). What a thing of beauty that was when it was new! (I've always thought that the black painted Nikkors were as pretty as the early painted Leica's.)

 

 

Combined with the superb 50MM F2 Nikkor, this was my only camera until 1975 and the arrival of my shiny new F2. I have 30 year old slides from the 50MM F2 that are still gorgeous.

 

 

Those were the days. A 100' roll of Panatomic-X cost around $15.

This was a Yashica EE, a somewhat uncommon rangefinder, chosen because it had auto metering. I discovered then that I liked taking pictures of flowers and the lessons I learnt were that -

 

1) it did not focus anything like as closely as I wanted.

 

2) poor framing sometimes resulted from lack of parallax correction

 

3) manual exposure was perfectly OK

 

As a result of this I became firm fan of SLRs buying next a Praktica PLC3 and then a Nikon FE. I have used Nikons for 35mm for years subsequently and now use a D70, F5, and, my favourite, a plain prism F for black and white. I recently bought a Yahica EE but it did not have the magic that the original one did.

 

regards JayDee

1975 a Pentax Spotmatic SP1000 with a 50mm f2.0 lens I was in university and a friend taught me how to process film and make prints - stuck primarily with SLRs although a Yashica Electro 35 crept in. In the past few years I have picked up used Spotmatic bodies and M42 lenses. Beautiful simple design.

My father's Kodak Retinette, bought when he was a young man in the 50s and passed on to me in 1980 when I was 12. He taught me how to use and point a light meter (Zeiss Ikophot), transfer the EV reading to the lens barrel, how to focus using a Watameter rangefinder attachment or guestimate, how to use depth of field and hyperfocal distance. My first roll of black and white through that camera was a milestone for me: the pictures were sharp and I loved the way shallow depth of field threw the background out of focus and kept the important parts of the picture sharp.

 

As others have pointed out, part of the satisfaction was the sheer physicality of the camera: its pleasant heaviness, the sound of gears and parts working smoothly and perfectly, the smell of the leather case.

 

Non-stop with classic cameras since then. The only brand new camera I ever bought was for work-related reasons, a Nikon 90 I think. I lost it within six weeks of purchase. I have often wondered whether I lost it because subconsciously I did not really care about it or love it. What I really miss is the set my pen and ink drawings of Turkey that was in the same bag as that camera - irreplaceable.

Kodak Signet 35. Honest. Only I didn't know it until a couple of years ago. I got it at a yard sale for $4.00 back in the mid '70's. I was 14. I figured it was mechanical, and it would be my own so I could learn about it just like my father's (his was a Diax L-1). Like another, I also didn't know the first thing about shutter speeds and depth of field. I used the settings as described in the film box. I used it as a scale focus. Then I read a book, and found out what a rangefinder was (So that's what that triangle is...). I also found it was soooooooooooooo out of adjustment. Then I found Classic Camera Forum, and I learned how to set it up. Then I found out just how good a lens it really has. Wow. It's followed me through 2/3 of my life now. I've since been given the Diax, but I love the Signet 35. If I had have known how good the camera really was, I may not have gotten started collecting others. What a bonus.

My first "serious" camera was an old Miranda with nice 50mm and 90mm lenses that I bought used as I started out as an art student at the College of Art and Design in Detroit... before tranfering to the Chicago Art Inst. It was a nice camera... I like the removable meter.

 

both my Signets have shutter problems (too common), but when I have them working I agree that they are wonderful. Most people don't want to deal with the film issue, but the lenses on the Bantam f4.5's is very similar in quality... just a gem of a lens!

I have only been doing this with any seriousness since 2001 but my first camera was anything BUT modern.

 

Mine is a Nikon FM. This is a great camera to learn on and I have done a lot with it and do to this day. It is not the "black" one but it works and works well.

 

Took someone I know over a year to talk me into buying it and two lenses. I did and was on my way. Still like what it does for me tho the VF is nto so hot and is even worse if you where glasses! My first roll of slide film had two shots that made my best 150 slides from the last 6 years, shot with this camera and a 35-70 manual Nikon Zoom.

 

I just used it last weekend to shoot some B&W tho I also use it still for slides and the results are excellent.

When I was about 12 I was given what was even then an old camera - a pre-war Foth Derby. It used 127 film, had a nice 50mm f3.5 lens, a focal plane shutter to 1/500 and folded away neatly to much the same size as today's P&S cameras. With that camera I learnt the photographic basics. I still have it though the shutter is a bit sticky now.

my first serious camera was a Pentax KM with a 50mm f/1.2 lens . I still have both (camera body and lens) . PC

My first "serious camera" was a Zeiss Contaflex IV bought from my graduate school advisor. It taught me a lot about camera use and (with a diopter lens) was great for close-up photography. I still have a Zeiss Contaflex IV (the original wore out) and still use it. After graduating to a Topcon SLR and the joys of a through the lens metering system with interchangeable screens and finders I stayed with them, as did my wife. We even bought several Topcon bodies when the line was discontinued. One wore out, but the others are still in use. Nothing like metal and glass cameras for sturdiness.

I guess "my" first camera was the Mamiya/Sekor 1000 DTL I mentioned in an earlier thread that I got when I was 11. The camera was not really mine, I bought it with my brother and we shared it. I learned all the basics of exposure and development with that camera. I took a junior high class in photography and got to be pretty good at printing on Velox and processing E-4 slides. But it was not my camera, and I didn't get my own until I got a used Miranda Sensomat RE in the very late 70s. It was just a good deal and I ended up liking that camera as much as the Mamiya, but it was stolen from me in the early '80s, as was my next camera - a brand new OM2N I bought to replace the Miranda, and our old Mamiya was stolen from my brother at a race. All these thefts happened within a year. That influenced me to quit any serious photography for some years. I just couldn't afford to have my equipment swiped that often. By the time I got some Canon equipment, I had graduated college. At least none of my cameras have ever been stolen since!

Mine was a Praktica Fx3 with a 50mm tessar which worked fine until you tried to take vertical photos ( waist level finder only) My Dad bought me a Pentax Spotmatic for my 18th birthday, wow, was that a breeze to use after the Praktica! I still use Spotmatics from time to time and they still stack up as one of the nicest cameras of all time to use.

Tony

A mid sixties Bronica with Nikon made lens. Wonderful camera. Before that a really terrible Yashica twin lens 120. The influence: the Bronica made serious photography and big enlargements possible.

When I was in high school in the 1970's I saved the money I made from mowing lawns and shoveling snow and bought a Rollei 35. I shot mostly Kodachrome25 or Panatomic-X and became very good at judging distance, as the Rollei does not have a rangefinder. A few years later I took a photography course which required me to have an SLR. I argued and argued to let me take the course with the Rollei, but the teacher would not relent, so I traded it in on a used Nikkormat. Looking back I realize the Rollei would have worked just as well for the course.

For me, there's a difference between the first camera I took seriously and my first serious camera. The first camera I took seriously was my Kodak Instamatic X-15. I took it and 3 cartridges of 126 film on our trip to Europe when I was 13 in 1975; I still have most of those pictures (although a lot of the color has faded) and just looked through them last week. The next camera I took seriously was an Olympus Infinity Zoom 230 AF camera. It was my goal to take beautiful pictures wherever I was, and show that it could be done with a simple p&s camera, although the real impetus behind this 'mission' was the fact that I couldn't afford anything better. I did take some beautiful pictures with it that I also still treasure to this day, in particular a picture of a sunrise that was unusually red due to the effects of ash thrown into the atmosphere by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the early '90s. It truly was a great camera and seemed a little bit ahead of its time. My first really serious camera was my Canon A2 which I bought in 1994. That single camera changed my life and helped me to really begin to focus on photography, and has traveled with me around the world to Asia and back and points in between, helping me capture some of the best images I've ever gotten. The shutter finally failed in September 0f 2002, so that was my excuse to buy an EOS 1vHS, but I got it fixed anyway, and the A2 still takes pictures as beautiful as the day it was bought. In my mind, it's a legendary camera. For the last few years I've shot mostly digital with Canon and Nikon DSLRs and various compact digitals, and even though I absolutely love my EOS digital, I find myself gravitating back to film a lot (a whole lot!), especially since I began acquiring vintage cameras. The biggest lesson I learned from my A2 was that I could learn a camera well enough to feel as though I'd bonded with it, to the point that using it became intuitive and fluid. This allowed me to focus on creating a beautiful image instead of focusing on trying to figure out my gear or trying to remember how to perform certain functions.

electro 35, followed by 2 spotmatics,then a 645,next hasseys in 1980....and a cannon f1 for fun(old one with 85f1.8,200 f2.8)never had digital......

Praktica LTL all very manual SLR - but with a light meter built in.<P>

The ground rules were given me by father with a VPK - adjusting the two exposure controls by guesstimation, and only changing it if the weather changed.<P>

The first intentionally serious purchase was a brand new eos 3000 kit.<BR>

Purely by chance, starting with Canon eos kit meant that I could later get adapters to use the old manual lenses on a DSLR.<P>

 

So I think the Praktica was the first serious one and had the biggest influence, but the early lessons, teaching that you don't need much gear, and the pure luck of starting with the eos system that allows adaptation, are also quite significant.

Kodak Vigilant 620. followed by Monitor 620, followed by Retina I over a period of about 10 years. Still prefer to wing it regarding distance and exposure althiugh I'm weakening on exposure.

Mine was my father's Kodak Retinette IIB rangefinder, which he purchased during a trip to Italy in the late 1950's. He gave it to me in the early 1990's.

 

It did prove to have quite an influence. I had switched to digital in early 2001 but picked this camera back up again a couple years later and so enjoyed running a roll of Tri-X through it that I switched back to film and have not looked back since.

I don't think the first camera I used or even the first 'real camera', whatever that means, had any particular influence. Each shooting situation I encounter I learn new things and am influenced by everything that came before. I think the camera matters less than things like which lens you chose, what exposure you gave and what viewpoint you took. The camera is after all just a tool that translates your vision into the photo.