What was your first camera and would it be a classic today?

[tito sobrinho]

My first camera was (is) my (6x6) YashicaFlex S, a gift from my father, brand new in 1956. It has a 80/3.5 Heliotar lens, and above the viewing lens, a large selenium ligh meter. A little later, I bought a Rollei bayonet 1 as well as a Rollei K2 filter. Got excellent pictures out of it but now, it stands on a shelf in my home office.

[tito sobrinho]

It should read: "a Rollei bayonet 1 lens hood"

[Matthew Currie]

My first camera was a "Beau Brownie" that had belonged to my father when he was a kid. Rather a fancy Brownie with 3 waterhouse stops and, I think, a time exposure setting. On the front it proudly proclaimed that it had a doublet lens. At some point after it was superseded it got left in a damp place and its rakish art-deco blue covering peeled off, and I think it has ceased to exist. A budget classic, I guess. My first proper adjustable camera was a Sawyer's Mark IV, which if it isn't a classic should be. It was a beauty.

[mskovacs]

Michael: that's a super photo (kodachrome?) and a great camera. However, I don't think that's an Photomic FTn prism on there, rather a Photomic Tn. The FTn has semi-automatic indexing, like the one in my profile photo.

 

Being of younger vintage than many here, my first camera was a 1970's Kodak Instamatic. It took cartridge film and the tall vertical flashes with about 10 bulbs built in that you flipped over to burn the second half. My first real camera (high school) was a Nikon FM which I stupidly sold when I exited photography for most of my university years. I guess neither are classic by the forum rules but I think the FM has a lot going for it.

 

Manual focus Nikon (F3HP, FM2N) again makes-up my SLR system for most of my shooting with classics taking an increasing slice of the pie.

[tito sobrinho]

Michael's Nikon, has the Photomic T, manufactured just for 1 year; introduced in 1965, discontinued in 1966 - (Nikon F Photomic T) -

[silent1]

The first camera I was allowed to use was a Kodak Duoflex (IV, I think -- no adjustments, that I can recall). The first one I called my own was an Instamatic 104, spring operated power film advance and took a flashcube. The first one I bought was a Pony 135, with which I got a closeup diopter that I used with the lens at closest focus instead of infinity to take macro shots of tiny flowers -- first pictures I ever took that really justified Kodacolor when it was still expensive to process. My first SLR was an Exa II -- something of a collector's item now, but I wouldn't want another one.

 

All of those are classics on one way or another. I've recently bought a couple Pony 135s that I plan to combine into one good working one. I doubt I'll bother with a Duoflex, though -- it was just a box camera with big waist level finder and double exposure protection, and while it would be a good casual shooter, I'd rather work with the ones I have and those I haven't had the pleasure of shooting in the past.

[glenn_thoreson]

A bakelite Brownie Holiday, around 1956. Don't know if I would consider it a classic but I did get some pretty decent pictures with that little critter.

[keith_slater]

My first camera was a vivitar 110EF. I recieved it for graduation from my grandparents in 1992. I can remember my grandmother telling me how easy it was to load the film. I went in the navy the next month and took it around the world. I still have it and tried to take some pics with it last summer. Not very good. Its funny, the whole time I was in the navy and the first years of my marrage I used it and never realized it was a piece of junk. Now that I am into photography and have better cameras I can really tell the difference. I do cherish the photos I took with it.

[frank granovski]

My 1st camera was an old Kodak rangefinder which my mother gave to me in 1958. My 2nd camera was a Voigtlander Vitomatic 11 my father gave to me in 1962. Both are classics today and both were not new when I had them given to me. The Vitomatic 11 came out in 1954. I believe the Kodak, which I can't recall too well, was about the same vintage or older.

[enrico_barsetti]

My mother gave me a Kodak Instamatic 233 at the age of ten, first camera bought with my own money a FED 3 when I was fifteen, classics maybe the FED?

[h._p.]

Pentacon FM (a Contax S with a split image rangefinder spot). Important only because it was one of the first two pentaprism SLRs, the other being the Italian Rectaflex.

[Jochen_S]

My first pictures were done with my mothers Agfa Pocket. My first new and own Camera was a Disc 2000 in 1983 at age 13. After this I did a roll with my Fathers Vito C (classí£¬ still in working condition) and inherited a Super Isolette (surely classic, but still a good camera) which even takes my fathers 32mm snap on filters. The next new one was a Pentax Super Program, not classic yet.

[frank granovski]

I believe that first cam of mine was a Kodak Signet 35. My mother had a Kodak Duoflex at the the time which I also used now and then especially during summer trips. Those where the days! No worries!

[bennybee]

My first camera was a Diana. I was 12 years old and a could afford just enough pellets for the airgun at the local fair to shoot the required 10 plaster 'pipes' for the camera. Sadly I dont' have the camera any longer but I still have a couple of b/w prints made with it. My second camera was an Instamatic 133, then a Topcon Unirex which my late father offered to buy so that I could upgrade to a Nikon FM. He never mastered the Unirex though and ended up using his first camera - the Richard Six pictured in an earlier thread, and which is with me now.

[harry_zet]

an exakta varex IIa my father gave to me when i was 15 years old

in 1975. it was his camera, i also got a 2,8/35 steinheil, a 2,8/50

jena T, a 2,8/90 travegon and a 3,5/135 ennalith, plus a very rare

travemat ttl-finder and a braun flash. with this camera i started

my photo-journalist career, when a helicopter exploded 50m

away from me as he touched a flag-pole during start.

[goemon]

I think I had a 110 camera at some point, but it made absolutely no impression upon me.

The first camera I owned that I used seriously was a Canon AE-1 with a busted meter; still

have it, actually. So many of those were made I doubt anyone thinks of it as a "classic" in

any real sense.

[bill_thorlin]

The first I ever owned was a Kodak Retinette 1a given to me by my father.Went to work in Kenya in 1968 and decided I had to have better so spent my first Christmas bonus on a Minolta SRT101.I do not know if it is a classic by your terms but to me it is - I still have it and use it sometimes and it still performs.

 

It suddenly occured to me that I might still have the Kodak. Have looked in the back of a cabinet drawer in my study and lo and behold there it is !! What does that say about my hoarding instincts.

[ejstark]

My first camera was Smena 8M, probably the most numerous camera in the world (more than 15 million of them were produced in USSR). Unfortunately I couldn't find any print of the pictures I made by this camera. But my second camera was father's Zenit-E, wich was in use until 2003, when I bought Minolta Dynax 5. Here is the sample photo made by this Zenit-E on the Soviet Naval base in Sassitz, Germany in early 80es. Film was ORWOChrome I think.<div></div>

[frank granovski]

Re: "What does that say about my hoarding instincts."

 

That I understand. I sometimes find things that I thought I lost. Just the other day I found some old push-on filters I had forever. Sounds like we have the same blood? My blood goes back to the Old Testament.

[randyjay]

My first camera was a Brownie Fiesta that I got for Christmas in 1965 when I was 14 years old. I remember it took 127 film and crappy pictures. The first camera I bought was a Pentax Spotmatic when I was in college. My next camera I got was a Minolta XG-1n that I still have.<p>Randy Jay

[mskovacs]

Tito: Can you see some small detail that I cannot? The T and Tn look nearly identical outwardly except the metering ASA range and the "N" marking. FYI for the group, the T has an averaging meter pattern, the Tn a 60:40 center-weighted pattern.

[gene m]

I bought a Leica something on the street in Vietnam. I shot part of a roll of Kodachrome and left it on a bar stool in Saigon. I don't want to go on......

[charles_stobbs3]

A small Univex, 19 cents, Rexall Drug, 00 (Gaevert film). A year or two later I bought the improved 50 cent model (folding sheet metal viewfinder instead of the spring wire bail that flipped down around the body of the camera for storage).

[lesged]

It was a Univex Mercury, a half frame 35mm camera with a strange rotary shutter. Special cassettes with Gavaert film had a brass geared bottom. I used bulk film ordered by mail from L.A. I still use bulk film. My father gave it to me for my 13 birthday; the year was 1939.

Back story: Turns out it was not a new camera, no, it was a demo model bought at a reduced price which allowed such a luxury gift during the depression. My first roll was used to shoot a string of surfaced submarines on the Thames river in New London. Imagine a half frame 35mm shot of subs so far away they'd look like dust on the emulsion. The excitement to soup my 72 exposures in MQ developer was dashed when I saw the film never advanced. All 72 shots were stacked one on top of the other. Talk about multiple exposures!

 

We took the camera back to store where the owner, a friend of Dad's, understood the fault and quickly corrected the problem. The pressure plate was not exerting enough pressure, which allowed the advance gears to turn and cock shutter without advancing film. I hadn't yet learned about checking rewind knob to see if it rotated. A small adjustment with a jeweler's screw driver reset pressure plate and camera worked fine afterwards and I used it till I turned 18 when I went from inactive reserve to active duty into the Army Air Corps.

 

They allowed enlistment at 17, but I had to cool my heels till I was old enough to be called up for cadet training. By that time WW2 was nearly over and they cancelled the whole program as they had a surplus of pilots. Childhood dreams of leather helmet, goggles, white scarf trailing in the back of the open canopy --right out of the Hollywood movies about WW1-- evaporated. Never got a shot at being another Red Baron.

 

I posted a picture of me and buddy standing by the nose wheel of a B-29 taken with my Kodak Bullet camera. I still have negatives from the Mercury that I can scan and post when I get home in April. BTW a later model Mercury II used conventional 35mm cassettes.

 

Sorry for rambling on. It happens when you are on the threshold of near Methuhselah longevity

[michael_spencer3]

Mike, Tito

 

I think Tito has got the right answer. As far as I know the meter is a 60-40 weighted toward the center spot. Mike, I don't quite follow what you mean by ASA metering range. Here is the original warrenty card which I read as a Nikon F Photomic T ...

 

Mike<div></div>