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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> when and what was your very first camera
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12/10/2013 02:42:19 PM · #1
Like SOOOOO many people in the 60s, my first camera EVER was a Kodak Instamatic, which I received for Christmas - nice Jewish family that we are...

My memory has turned to mush on most things but the memory, both the visual and emotional one, of opening the gift to discover the camera, is something I can still relive. The first time I ever raised the viewfinder to my eye, the way I viewed the world changed forever. The ritual of active looking, composing, shooting, sending the roll in for developing, picking up the envelop with the prints, and viewing the results of my child efforts, is something I continue to experience to date, even if the technology (and waiting time) has changed.

Do your remember YOUR first ever camera?
12/10/2013 02:48:15 PM · #2
yashica reflex
12/10/2013 02:56:43 PM · #3
I was a sophomore at Iowa State University in 1971. My first camera was a beloved Canonet QL19.
12/10/2013 02:59:20 PM · #4
In the mid-1960s I had a low-end Kodak camera that I think took 126 film, I believe 12 exposures per cartridge. I didn't shoot much with it, but I sure wish I had some of the prints. Don't know what ever happened to them.
My first love, though, was an Exakta VX IIa that had belonged to my Dad. He "upgraded to another Exakta VX body, and gave me the IIa in the early 1970s. I shot quite a bit with it, and bought a few lenses to augment the basic 50mm f/1.4 lens it came with. Two of the lenses I still own today (Steinheil 35mm and 135mm macro lenses).
12/10/2013 03:03:46 PM · #5
I don't remember... so many cameras, so many years. I do remember I was shooting and developing "BW only" at my dark room when I was teenager. My very first digital camera was a Polaroid I believe but I just don't remember the model... I don't think it was even 1Mpx
12/10/2013 03:17:14 PM · #6
My grandfathers Agfa Clack.
And I still have it - although transformed to a pinhole camera.
12/10/2013 03:17:46 PM · #7
Can't remember the numerous little cameras I had as a kid. After I got my first job I saved up for a SLR.

I brought a Canon AE-1 Program in 1981

I had that camera for 20 years!
12/10/2013 03:22:27 PM · #8
I remember loving Polaroids when i was a teenager so that was probably my first camera. I used to like smearing the wet emulsion around with a nail or a pin and making peoples faces warp. Wish i still had some of those photos.

Around the age of 16 or so i got a Nikon. Can't remember which one. It was quite an old one even at the time though. My boss at the theatre where i started working was a keen photographer and i sometimes did darkroom stuff with him. I've actually been sorting through some stuff and found probably the only print i have from that time (i have many shop developed pics). I put a lot of photos of my young daughter, Matilda up on DPC but here's a shot of my son. He's 22 now so this would have been 1992 and i would've been 19 or so. There's an 18 year gap between the two kids.



You can probably see that my style and approach hasn't changed much in over 20 years! I went for the grainy black and white even then!

Message edited by author 2013-12-10 16:10:56.
12/10/2013 03:33:51 PM · #9
my first camera was a 100mm point and shoot. that's all I remember.

my first SLR was I think a Pentax. I left it in a movie theater.
12/10/2013 03:40:46 PM · #10
Instamatic
Bad white anglo-saxon protestant family got my brother and my sister Brownie 127s, but I was the youngest and I think relatives were pegging out before it got to my turn. I had to save up and buy my own. I'll root around for pictures...
12/10/2013 04:03:23 PM · #11
First camera that was mine was an Agfa Silette that my dad had bought at a flea market and taken apart and cleaned and used for a few years. I inherited it as my own when he died in 1979, when I was 15. I still have it. I haven't used it in years, but I'll always keep it.

Message edited by author 2013-12-10 16:29:07.
12/10/2013 04:20:25 PM · #12
had to sell it for my cross country travel from cape town to amsterdam
still regret it
12/10/2013 04:22:18 PM · #13
My first camera was a 110 Instamatic in 6th or 7th grade. Graduated to a Praktica SLR by 8th grade, then a Canon A-1 by HS. Still have the A-1 :)
12/10/2013 04:58:46 PM · #14
Wow, I cannot believe I found it!

Purple and Teal Vivitar 110 Point N' Shoot Camera w/ Case - Avon Model

My mom sold Avon, I never even knew it came from there until finding this.

I was pretty young when I got it, so my only real memories are taking it to the zoo and having a stack of flash cubes which I was told I shouldn't waste because flashes are expensive :)
12/10/2013 05:00:27 PM · #15
Originally posted by Leo:

My first camera was a 110 Instamatic in 6th or 7th grade. Graduated to a Praktica SLR by 8th grade, then a Canon A-1 by HS. Still have the A-1 :)


My first was some POS 110 like that as well... No idea what make.

Used dad's 35mm P&S for a while, then went digital, started out with a .3mp potato-cam of some sort in 1999 or 2000...
12/10/2013 05:16:13 PM · #16
The first camera I can remember using was an Argus 35mm rangefinder camera. I can still feel how much smoother the mechanical shutter-release was compared to the electronic buttons/switches we use now. I've used a variety of P&S and Instamatic-type cameras at various timessince then, and for a while shot with a Ricoh 35mm zoom I borrowed from my mom (I have two of them now).

My first digital was the Olympus D490Z (still have/use it); after ending up at DPC I got the Canon S1 IS and then S3 IS, and occasionally I use a Canon A80 I got for Isaac.
12/10/2013 05:24:36 PM · #17
I think it was an instamatic I got for Christmas.

Of course, the memory was indelibly burned onto my forehead, when I realised how hot these flash-bulb cubes got.
12/10/2013 05:39:17 PM · #18
Originally posted by JH:

Of course, the memory was indelibly burned onto my forehead, when I realised how hot these flash-bulb cubes got.


ROFL!!!! I was 10 at the time, but my experience didn't include any branding!

I don't remember what - if any - other cameras I had, but eventually my dad gave me his Minolta 101. I used that a LOT for many years, until switching to digital and Nikon.
12/10/2013 06:41:24 PM · #19
Polaroid Automatic Land Camera
Polaroid SX70
Canon FTB
Canon AE1
Canon A1
Canon 10D
Canon 40D

(Yeah, I'm old)
12/10/2013 06:45:08 PM · #20
12/10/2013 06:47:55 PM · #21
1958, Agfa Silette. Coolest thing...



I stepped up from that to a Nikon F1 in the late 60's:

12/10/2013 06:51:11 PM · #22
Zenit E with Helios 44 58mm F2.0

First digital Founder PhotoPower 245T

Edit: that was back in 1985

Message edited by author 2013-12-12 09:50:09.
12/10/2013 07:04:57 PM · #23
It's fun reading all these Johanna, great thread.

My first camera was a gift from my parents for my HS graduation. It was a Kodak of some kind. Don't recall the model but got lots of great grad partay shots on it!! It did last through the grad night thankfully.

My earliest memory of my parents taking photos of us kids involved them holding the camera in front of themselves and bending over the top to look at the viewfinder. Have no idea what kind of camera that was.
12/10/2013 08:03:15 PM · #24
In 1965 my first camera was a KODAK INSTAMATIC cartridge loaded pocket camera.
12/10/2013 08:15:27 PM · #25
You guys are so young but you make it sound like it was so long ago! LOL!

My first camera was the Kodak Brownie, I can't remember if it was the Hawkeye or Holiday, but it took 127 film, that I got for Christmas in the mid 50's. I still have a lot of the pictures I took with it (how many of you will have digital images almost 60 years after you took them?) as a kid. I even have some I took of Horse Tail Falls in the Columbia Gorge in the mid 50's that I duplicated with my digital camera a few years ago. Back then the falls was just off the shoulder of the road but I got pretty much the same angle. I could see the erosian from where the water has wore down the rock behind the falls in the last 50 years. In a few thousand years it could be well away from the road. LOL! My next camera was the Instamatic 104 which I used quit a bit as well. I found that if you kept a flash cube on it, it slowed the shutter down, so I had just the base of a flash cube on it all the time unless I put a unused cube on to take pictures most of the time. I had a number of Kodak folding cameras and used a number of 8x10 cameras in school in the 60's (I took most of the year book pictures during my Jr. High School years, almost all of them with the 8x10 camera).

I didn't get my first real SLR until the early 70's when I joined the AF and I got a Mamyia Sekor 500 DTL. I took lots of pictures with it and sold it to a guy in Turkey when I left and bought a Mamyia Sekor 1000 DTL. A much improved camera over the 500 and I still have it. Lots of other cameras through the years, some I wish I hadn't bought some I hated out growing. I got into Canon's in the mid 90's with a Rebel G. I hated it because it was my first auto camera and it wasn't really designed to do anything manually very quickly, including manual focus. I fought with it for a number of years and finally upgraded to a EOS 3, which I loved but only had it a short time before I got into digital with the D30, then the 10D and finally the 1DMK II. I wish I had sold the EOS 3 while film was still pretty popular as it's too good of a camera to just be sitting in my file cabinet, but that's the way it goes with cameras and lenses and all the other junk we buy over the years.

Mike
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