What drove your decision to buy a more capable camera early on in your photography experience?

Good thread: I like the very different stories.
My father was in recreational photography since ever and had several old and new stuff to play with: He mostly used a F&H Rolleiflex K4 (120 films) and later a Konica Autoreflex T3 (135 films).
In the meantime I got a Ferrania ibis 6/6 (120 films) from a professional photographer when I became 10 years old. Beside the cameras of my dad, this simple P&S 6x6 was my only camera until I had my 18th birthday. My dad gave me one of his many cameras (Rollei B35, 135 films) and this delicate piece of mechanics lasted mid of 1990ies. I still had no clue regarding the developing process, but I mastered very well all the required manual settings in different light situations. The more I understood, the more the B35 was my limiting tool for macro, tele and flash suppoerted work.

Sadly, around 1990 the APS systems (240 films) where highly promoted and I got a Minolta Vectis S-1 with a few lenses and some accessories. It did cover my needs very well, until the decline of the APS film delivery in the new century. Of course I used the APS sellout to get all system lenses as well as more accessories and my first digital camera: The Vectis mount compatible Konica-Minolta RD3000.

Around 2010 the dying horse APS became more evident and this pushed me back to standard 135 type film and M mount. Thanks to this forum I had the chance to get a well serviced Konica Hexar RF, which I complemented with several Voigtlander lenses and other M compatible bodies. Still in use for film shooting.
For the digital domain I got a fixed lens Fujifilm X100 and went later into the Fujifilm X-Pro line with related lenses.

Next investments will be in other M and XF lenses, as well as a dedicated Sony E mount body to adapt my Minolta Vectis lenses. I bought the adapter last winter.
 
Tim Murphy said:
Dear Board,

I got started with Kodak Instamatics and a Polaroid Square Shooter that I won selling newspaper subscriptions. When I was about 16, I received a Canonet 28 and Canolite D as a Christmas present, and I used them often.

After my freshman year of college, I bought a Canon F-1 from a neighbor along with a Vivitar 135mm f2.8 lens. It was my only camera and lens for a long time until I got out of the Air Force. I traded it in on a used Canon A-1, but I just never got used to the A-1 and I sold it and gave up photography for quite a while.

In the early 1990's I bought a Canon EOS Elan, a Canon 28-80 USM, and a Canon 70-300 USM kit from a long-gone camera store that advertised in Modern Photography and Popular Photography magazines. I used the camera a lot including for work photographing used construction equipment that was being traded in, but eventually the dealership where I worked computerized and needed digital pictures. They provided me with an Olympus C-2000Z digital with a whopping 2.1 megapixels. And my Elan returned to weekend and vacation use.

As film lost favor so did my interest in photography. But in 2005 a friend bought a new Panasonic LX-1 digital P&S, and he gave me his old Olympus C-2040Z. Once again, I was interested in photography. I have been buying and selling secondhand cameras like crazy ever since. I still use the C-2040Z once or twice a year though, and I'll always be grateful to my buddy for his generous gift.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA :)
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I also had an Olympus C-2020 and feel your pain, by only using a 135mm lens!
 
My first camera was a Pentax K1000. I bought it because a friend had the Minolta X700 and I thought it was cool. I could only afford the K1000 at the time, so it was what I bought.
 
A neighbor bought me a Mamiya 1000 DTL when he was in Vietnam before he came home. I had bought it on recommendation of a friend. Hated that camera as it was a tank compared to my neighbors SR-T101 that he'd bought for himself while over seas. He let me borrow it before my camera arrived. I never got a good shot with that DTL.
It did serve to teach me what to look for in a camera when I went to purchase my next one. Almost a decade later I bought my Nikon FE.
I still have it and the wife I had to convince we needed that good a camera to record our kids with. Looking back, I didn't take nearly enough photo's back then as we had other things to spend my hard earned money on.
Now I find I have a plethora of digital goodness to choose from to record my grandkids, but I find most times I just love watching them, playing with them and marveling at what our prodigy have brought into our lives, rather than taking pictures of them.
 
Guth said:
Back in 1971 I received a Kodak Instamatic as a gift for my 9th birthday. While my interest in photography was spurred on by that little Instamatic, I eventually became painfully aware of its limitations.
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Same for me, though I started with 127-format box cameras, then an 8mm ciné camera from which I learned about exposure controls, then Instamatics. In 1971 I bought a Pentax SP500 which I still use a fair bit even today.

My only regret is not using Polaroid cameras sooner; I became interested only a few years before they stopped making film.
 
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I started out at age 6 with an Agfa Instamatic. At 12, after much saving, I finally got a Canonet 28, that lasted a long long time as my sole camera. When at last I could afford the SLRs that I had always wanted, I was so set in the RF way that I could not get used to them!
 
My first camera was one of those black, brick-like Vivitar 110 cameras with built-in flash, and a 127-format camera built into my Secret Sam Kit but I never got usable pictures from it.

In the late ‘70s I got my first serious camera, a Minolta STT101b and 50/1.x lens. Still have the lens, along with X700 and X370 bodies. Bought them in Singapore while on the Connie.
 
In 1985, I got tired of having to adapt the Camera, to the Cerebral Palsy warrior. I decided it was high time to learn how to make the camera adapt to the photographer. I went from fixed focus Instamatic to RolleiFlex 4x4 Sport, with uncoated Tessar, f4.5 and 1/300 second rim set unsynched Compur. I began with Kodacolor 200 and Sunny 16. Worked a treat. After second mid roll jam, graduated to a 1957 Yashica-Mat, and the Canon SnappyS my Mom bought me that Christmas. $4 began me down the path I still am taking today! I went full Jason Schneider.
 
Brownie, Instamatic, Point&Shoot. This was on western side. On the dark side it was all manual Smena...

Pentax, Nikon, Canon on West side. Dark side - Zenit, Kiev and FED.

Now both sides are on Apple side. With iPhones at this moment been cheaper in Moscow comparing to Toronto.

I skipped Smena, went with parents FED-2 until early nineties. Loading AGFA from DDR.
After wall went down - Point&Shoot. And by 1998 first, cheapest EOS, only on green box.
It was some film to choose from. Konica... Once in Canada it was Kodak from Walmart with so-so prints and awful scans.
By 2005 first digital P&S, in 2006 FujiFilm advanced P&S where I learned semi-manual modes.

In 2009 - Canon 500D, first half a year only in M. Thousands exposures. Learned all technicalities. Went full frame and by 2012 to 2021 was on artsy side a.k.a. film and Leica.

Now, after COVID great divide to those who are managed to stay at home, "W"FH and those who were labeled as essential workers, I only have time to hold in hands for pleasure couple of digital Leica and few digital Ricoh/Pentax.
 
My parents had a scale focus Zeiss Ikon Contina II with build in light meter and EV values set from that determined the exposure with shutter speed and aperture linked on the lens barrel. The shutter was a Prontor Synchro Compur I think. My problem was the scale focus, and the squinty central viewfinder. I used this between the ages of 12 and 17 and all of the photos of us children were taken by my father with that camera. He took some good ones, despite how little he really seemed to understand of the fundamentals. He preferred 1/125s at f8. I now realise that is not too far from Jane Bown's 1/60s at f2.8 in concept. It worked in the early '60s even. "An exposure I like."

Next the squinty viewfinder and the scale focus were comprehensively put to one side by my father giving me an M2 with a 50 Summilux lens. I later bought an M4 for the rapid film loading and rewind and later an M6 for the meter, but in truth in the 56 years since I had the M2 it was really the only camera I needed. The frame lines and the manual controls are still the core of it. The lenses are secondary. The latest Leica M film camera is essentially an M2. It is a get out of your way camera. You don't know you're using it. Even the external frame counter had a single purpose astrolabe-like simplicity. There's film in it now, the sweetest of all my cameras in operation.
 
My first camera was a Praktica BMS and used it extensively throughout the 90s. Apparently, B-series Prakticas develop a fault with the capacitor and the shutter became erratic. Eventually it flew off a hill together with the tripod and the shutter button went missing during a photo trip to the mountains of Epirus. I still have some pictures from that last trip. I replaced it in 1997 with an EOS-5 which I still have and use.
 
My first camera was a Minolta X700. I was coaching a professional basketball team in Germany--I'd done a bit of photography before then, using other people's cameras, but it was mostly stuff for the local newspapers and I didn't know what I was doing. But I decided to buy a "nice" camera to take some "snapshots" while I was in Europe. And then I found more and more that I really liked doing it--and we had a nice, traditional camera store in town run by a young gentleman and his wife, and he was always pushing (in a gentle and friendly way) new stuff on me: "Oh, it's so easy to develop your own black and white film! Let me get you the stuff you need to do it. Ah, with this lens, you can take closeups!" etc.

I enjoyed using the X700 and it was indeed a nice camera. However, one day I was in Bremen and stopped in a second-hand camera shop there. (This was back in the late 90s, when any decent-sized city practically anywhere would have *multiple* good camera shops.) They had a Nikon F4 second hand for a really cheap price. Once I handled that thing I was like, "Yes! This is the camera for me!" It just *felt* great in my hands--and it still does, over 25 years later. Of all the many cameras I've owned and used since then, that's still probably the most *fun* and enjoyable camera to shoot that I have. Over time, I learned to use more and more of its capabilities--and it has a lot of those, without (like modern digital cameras) having *too* many "features" that actually get in the way of taking photos and have to be shut off.

I am at the point where, after nearly three decades of shooting, I've often mentored young or beginning photographers, some of whom have gone on and are doing amazing things. And I tell them all the time that a camera is like a guitar: you can have the most expensive guitar in the world, but if you don't know how to play it, you ain't making music. But if you know what you're doing, and someone hands you a cheap guitar, after a bit of tuning you can be jamming away on it. Plus some guitars are more fun and enjoyable, or easier, to play than others, and make you *want* to make music--and you should always choose the guitar that gives you the particular sound/feel you want on a given song.

So to me, the biggest thing is to find a camera that "plays" the way you like, that "sounds" the way you like in terms of the images you make with it, that helps immerse you in the moment and enables you to experience, see and snap the moments you want to hold on to, without having to fight it, or being conscious of its quirks/annoying features. That was important to me as a "new" photographer, and it's still vital to me--every camera I have is one that I "feel" happy shooting, and the ones I've disposed of are ones that didn't have that feel that made it easy, fun, and efficient to make the best photographs that I can.
 
rulnacco said:
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So to me, the biggest thing is to find a camera that "plays" the way you like, that "sounds" the way you like in terms of the images you make with it, that helps immerse you in the moment and enables you to experience, see and snap the moments you want to hold on to, without having to fight it, or being conscious of its quirks/annoying features. That was important to me as a "new" photographer, and it's still vital to me--every camera I have is one that I "feel" happy shooting, and the ones I've disposed of are ones that didn't have that feel that made it easy, fun, and efficient to make the best photographs that I can.
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Good insight.
 
Went from a "Prosumer" camera to a Canon 5D when it was the only full frame camera out there long before my skill required it. I was determined to bring myself up to the level of that camera. I might get close one of these days.
 
Although I had played with some Instamatic cameras, and even a pinhole, I guess my first "good" camera wasn't really mine. My Father loaned me his Olympus XA for my school-organized trip to France and Switzerland the summer after I graduated High School (1985). I didn't understand exposure at the time, but since it was aperture priority, I don't think I missed many exposures. I did get pretty good with the tiny rangefinder. Eventually that camera started dropping screws and, even though my Father had it repaired once or twice, it didn't last. Sad, as apparently people pay stupid amounts of money for them now.

The next summer (1986), I bought a Canon T70 and, sadly, let the sleazy NY salesweasel talk me into a crappy Kalimar zoom lens. That was the last zoom lens I bought until I got into the Fuji XE series in 2012! My brother was gifted a T90 as his college graduation gift, which is why I went with the T70. If it was aperture priority, and not shutter priority (plus Program and a OK manual mode), I would have kept it a lot longer. It served me well, along with a Canon FD 50/1.8, through all of my college photo classes (except the large format class, where the school let us borrow a camera for the quarter, and I borrowed the Calumet Woodfield).

I suppose to answer the question in the title, I'd say my "more capable" camera was a used Canon F-1 that I bought used about a year or so after graduation. I wanted full manual exposure, and the F-1 was an absolute tank. I took it to International Camera Technicians in Mountain View, CA to get a CLA and to get the meter readout fixed, and the technician thought that the original F-1 was the best 35mm camera ever made. He was very opinionated about a lot of things, and any camera technology he didn't like was a "piece of [fertilizer]"! The previous owner had put their thumb into the titanium shutter, and there was a clear dent, but it never affected how well it worked. I think I finished my FD collection with a 35/2.8, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 100/4 macro and 300/4 when I sold it all.

I have since moved to a Leica M6, which I sold to fund a M6TTL (still have), a Yashica T-4 (sold when the prices bottomed out), replaced the F-1 with a F-1N (eventually sold that too), a Mamiya 645E with 3 lenses (also all sold), a Fuji GA645zi (also sold when film cameras weren't getting much) and an Ebony 45SU (which I'll keep as long as I live). Now, I mostly shoot with the Fuji X-E3 or the Ebony, but I learned a lot from that F-1, and still apply that knowledge to the Leica, Ebony and Fuji.

Drew
 
In 2nd through 5th grade I used a Hawkeye R4. Upgraded to 110 instamatic. In college I would borrow my girlfriends Nikon FG and marveled on how much nicer the photographs were compared to the 110 instamatic. After college I was gifted a Minolta 7000. While the FG schooled me in film, exposure, development, etc., the Minolta schooled me in how I didn't like auto everything for B&W and before long and I bought another Nikon FG when I moved to NYC, then upgraded to a Nikon F3 because the FG died. I don't know why I bought a Leica M2 (1998 i think) except maybe it was a reaction to a bad marriage and the F3 died; I was sick of cameras dying on me and wanted something more reliable. 25 years later I have too many cameras, maybe 1 per year if you include old hawkeyes I like to flip the lenses on.
 
My ego led me from a Baby Brownie to a Hawkeye. Then a Vito II, my icon, and then a Pentax K1000, and then an ME Super. The last few years have been a frenzy to insure I leave any heirs as little as possible by squandering money on cameras and lenses. I have a good collection of both. Now I need to learn how to use them. The only way I can learn is by pushing that shutter button.
 
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