1970 1st budget SLR revisited

[dee]

Late 60s, early 70s we would visit Bond St in London where I would go into Dixons and Wallace Heaton and dream of the cameras .
Finally , I could afford a new SLR but the Spotmatic was out of reach , so it was a Dixons Prinxflex STTL - rebadged Chinon/Cosina at £90 .
I preferred it to the almost identical Zodel across the road due to the one touch shutter dial on the front of the camera .

I bought a few cheap STTL on e-bay to revisit my 1st SLR ,but I was wrong in one respect - Dixons had many outlets so many more STTLs were sold , so finding a Zodel has been tricky.

Hopefully , my daughter will be able to win a Zodel Body for me on e-bay .
It's not brilliant with broken mirror , but will fulfill a long term need to have both.

Basic they may have been , but the Copal Square shutter still clacks perfectly on all of my 4 examples.

I guess that these overlooked budget cameras saw less use than the contemporary main brands .

dee

 

[johnf04]

My 1970 budget SLR was more budget then yours, Dee - it was a Zenit 3m.

 

[CMur12]

I, too, would have dearly loved a Pentax Spotmatic - or even more out of reach, a Nikon F, in 1972. Instead, I cleaned out my checking account to get a demo model of a Yashica TL Super with the 50mm f1.7 lens. I think it cost me US $90.00 at the time, including sales tax. (The salesman took pity on me and reduced the price to what I had in my account.)

That Yashica provided me a grand introduction into photography!

I recently bought one of these, in need of repair, but handling it brings back the old memories.

- Murray

 

[pvdhaar]

I've got good memories of the Zenit-E that I started with in the seventies. I also gave some thought to getting one again for old times sake, but realized that the memories are better than the reality; the dark finder, the non-auto aperture stop down, the limited shutter speeds.. It'd become an albatross sitting in a cupboard..

 

[JP Owens]

The Zenit E was a somewhat crude, clunky camera; but it was a $100 camera with a lens back in the early 1970's that was certainly good enough to learn photography with. I suggested it to numerous high school kids back then who simply could afford noting else.

 

[Doug]

I worked in a retail camera shop in the mid-60s so was able to get my Pentax H3v and later a Spotmatic at dealer cost... replacing my first SLR, PetriFlex V. Been a Pentax fan ever since, and still have a Spotmatic.

 

[willie_901]

In 1969 my wife bought me a budget SLR... the Mamiya-Sekor 500TL. It sits on a shelf in my study to remind me of the wonderful experiences I enjoyed using that camera.

It still works as it did in 1969.

 

[Vics]

My 1971 first SLR was a Spotmatic, and I did love that that one, but replaced it later with a pair of K1000, which I still have and love. They are my "full circle" cameras for my old age.

 

[dee]

In retrospect , I should have bought a Minolta SR without meter as I love my later find , but they would have been difficult to find and TTL was the buzz word at the time !!

 

[oftheherd]

I, too, would have dearly loved a Pentax Spotmatic - or even more out of reach, a Nikon F, in 1972. Instead, I cleaned out my checking account to get a demo model of a Yashica TL Super with the 50mm f1.7 lens. I think it cost me US $90.00 at the time, including sales tax. (The salesman took pity on me and reduced the price to what I had in my account.)

That Yashica provided me a grand introduction into photography!

I recently bought one of these, in need of repair, but handling it brings back the old memories.

- Murray

The first 'real' camera that I bought was a Yashica TL Super. I also still have mine. It got me back into photography but only a couple of years after I got it. I don't recall what I paid for it, but I got it out of the PX catalogue so I would not have thought it likely to have been as much as one in the USA. But I am pretty sure it was more that $90.00. But I really don't recall for sure; that's nearly 45 years ago and lots of camera purchases in between.