The story behind your first camera

[p.giannakis]

I am always fascinated by people's stories.
I'd like to hear the story behind the acquisition of your first camera. When did you buy it, where, how easy or difficult was it to get it? What made you want a camera in the first place? Did you have to save for it or were you given one? Do you remember the feeling of actually having your own camera?

I'd love to hear your stories.

 

[Whateverist]

I got a compact film camera for my Confirmation as per family tradition. Photography didn't interest me so I think I used it maybe twice a year for trips. The last time I distinctly remember using it was when I visited Rome on a school trip in '03.

The first camera I bought because I actually wanted one was a Canon A640 that I saved up for. It had an optical viewfinder and manual controls so it was a pretty good starter camera. It went to my sister when I bought my first DSLR and she used it until the screen finally gave out.

My 'first' film camera - the first one I bought myself - was a Kiev 4A. I wanted a cheap film camera to take to festivals, thought about a disposable, then figured I might just buy a cheap film camera and eventually got sucked into analog photography proper. Still have the Kiev, it never went to a festival.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

When I was a kid, my dad bought a 35mm SLR. It was an Olympus OM-G (OM-20 outside the USA). Back then, in the early 80s, cheap SLRs like the OM-G and the Canon AE-1 and Pentax ME Super were being bought by non-serious photographers to do family snapshots and such.

The camera fascinated me, so my dad taught me how to use it. I ended up using it so much that he went and bought another one for me and gave it to me for my 11th birthday. I had it till I wrecked my first car when I was 16. The camera got broken in the car accident.

Funny thing is, my dad never got into photography, but his buying that camera gave me my start!

 

[jarski]

Mine was as boring as it can be: a Sony DSC-P51, common digital p&s at the time (2003). I was a young engineer my company had sent to do a project in Kuala Lumpur. I had done few similar trips already, but without any record from them, so decided to get my first camera. There were no camera phones, social media. Probably not even RFF 🙂

edit: just checked. my Sony had whopping 2 megapixels! 😀 recently I copied those early photos to my Google Photos account. it felt odd to have those same files, being dormant over 10 years on a hard drive, back in my finger tips, on a touch sensitive modern screen.

my first photo, Petronas Towers in KL, taken through a hotel room window when battery had charged enough:

 

[Arbitrarium]

By the time I was at the age where I could buy things with my own money, digital had just about removed film from the market (I'm 30), but I'd grown up with my dad shooting with various fancy 35mm compacts (Olympus LT-1 with the classy leather body went on many holidays, I think I inherited his penchant for buying for looks over function).

My first film camera was an Instamatic 110 camera I found when helping my parents move house. Used to take it out with me when we went out for beers at college. Camera eventually broke and I moved on to a Keystone Zoom 110 with a broken viewfinder so you had to guess the framing. Found in a charity shop. That went with me to Finland before convincing me to buy a proper camera to capture my trips. Need to go back to Helsinki now to take some actually good photos...

 

[ruby.monkey]

Back when the Big Two ruled the digital world, I lusted after a Nikon D200. So I waited for it to hit the shelves... and I waited... and I waited...

On one of my daily trawls of on-line camera sales I spotted a tidy second-hand FM3a; and on a whim I bought it. And that led to Nikon F's, and a Voigtlander R3A, and then my first Leica, and ultimately a bookshelf stacked with film cameras.

Took me another two or three years to get round to the dSLR, and that ended up being a Pentax K100d (great little camera, by the way). Maybe one day I'll pick up a Nikon dSLR. They'll probably have novelty value by then.

 

[p.giannakis]

My older brother was involved with photography since he inherited my father's Yashica Minimati-C. In 1989 he bought a photography magazine which had a review of 40 cameras in there. It fell on my hands and since i decided i wanted a camera. I was 12 at that time.

My parents did not agree to fund the purchase for a few years more as they thought that i will grow out of the idea. I remember February 1991 locking myself in my room and making calculations regarding how much money i needed to save. My parents, seeing that i was serious about it, they told that they would buy me one on the next Xmas.

Ten months later, they gave me 40.000 Drachmas (around £80). I went in Athens city centre with my older brother and we found a small photography shop - a bit bigger than a box room with cameras stockpiled up to the ceiling. We tried to haggle a Praktica MTL-5 but to no avail. I paid 32.000 drachmas (around £62) for a new Praktica BMS with a 50/1.8 and a nice leather bag.

I was over the moon. My parents took it off me and placed it under the Xmas tree - i was not allowed to open the box until Xmas day.

 

[Rangefinder M-P]

In 1964, I bought an Argus C-3 from a neighbor who had just acquired a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic. I seem to recall paying him $5 for it. I kept that camera for about two years before acquiring my on Spotmatic.

Mike

 

[Dogman]

My story is nothing special. It was in 1972--I was 24 years old with no prior interest in photography. I was visiting a friend who had borrowed a Pentax Spotmatic to make photos to use for his drawings. When I looked at the drugstore B&W photos and his drawings, I liked the photos better. I was fascinated by the gray tones even in the small, cheap prints. In short order, I bought my first 35mm camera--a Mamiya/Sekor 500 DTL with 50mm f/2 lens. Within 6 months I had set up a darkroom in my apartment. I sold the Mamiya/Sekor and bought a used Nikon F with a 50mm 1.4 lens and, later, a second Nikon and a few lenses. I was hooked.

 

[jsrockit]

Pentax K1000 with my high school graduation money.

 

[newspaperguy]

Oh wow...
my first REAL camera after several plastic cheapies was a split-frame 127 Foth-Derby.
Collapsible front standard,"fast" 3.5 lens, focal plane shutter, purchased from Central Camera
in Chicago while I was attending the School of the Art Institute, so about 1948.

Photo lifted from Camera-Wiki... Thank You!

(I'd forgotten how funky it looked. 😱)

 

[css9450]

Mine was also a K1000.

My parents had a Minolta SR-1 which I had used a handful of times. Once I entered High School, I was excited that they offered a semester-long photography class. I signed up for it and used the SR-1. Halfway through the semester, we went on a field trip to Chicago and spent a few hours walking the streets in some of the northside's upcoming trendy neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the old SR-1 jammed very soon after our arrival in Chicago and I spent the rest of the day just tagging along and imagining the photos I'd have taken.

So of course when I got home I was in huge trouble with my parents. Not only for jamming their camera, but also for not finishing the photography assignment which no doubt would affect my grade. So when Saturday rolled around, my dad took me downtown to Bass Camera in Chicago to get the cheapest 35mm SLR they had, and we re-traced my steps from the failed field trip a couple days earlier. I re-shot everything so Monday I could develop the film and print it and no one was the wiser.

That camera? A Pentax K1000.

 

[Steve M.]

My first "real" camera was a Canon AE-1 w/ a 50 1.8 that I bought over 20 years ago and took great photos.. The guy ahead of me in a Savannah thrift store had asked to see it, but for some reason he didn't want to buy it. So I asked, looked through the lens and held my hand in front of it to see if it was a SLR (that's how much I knew about photography). Price was $13.50 and came w/ a nice strap and battery. I had just moved to Savannah and all I had was a checkbook from Portland, Or, and they were nice enough to take it. Loved that camera, and learned a lot about exposure w/ it. Enough to make me want a camera w/ manual exposure later on.

Here's some pics I took it w/ it in Savannah and later in Daytona Beach (moving there was a mistake. I liked the people in Georgia much more than in Florida).

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I was bugging my parents about getting me camera. I don't know why. Our apartment have no space for DIY photography. They purchased me Shkolnik and I loaded it with film, which I have impression to be like Polaroid. Zero frames came out as visible. This set me back with photography until I was allowed to use parents FED-2.
I just loaded it with film, ten minutes ago.

 

[Jake Mongey]

Mine was a Pentax Ist*ds which was originally used my my family for snapshots but given to me in 2012 when I got into stop motion animation.

First film camera though was my grandfathers canon 7 which i got very lucky with, he purchased it in hong kong in 1961 while working for GCHQ intercepting russian radio signals. Been in use daily since I got it

 

[Spavinaw]

My actual first camera was a toy, all plastic split 127 named Falcon or something like that. The back eventually warped. It probably was in the late 1940's. My next camera was a Brownie Flash-620. I wanted a camera with a flash. The flash is shaped like no other flash before or since. My family bought it for me.
I really liked photography and saved up to buy my next camera. If I had bought a 35mm camera, I would have also needed an enlarger. So I went medium format instead and lived with contact prints for a few years. It is now the early 1950's. I had saved up $80 for a Kodak Tourist with 800 shutter. The Kodak Tourist II had just come out. It was $100. My aunt wanted me to have the latest model, and she gave me the extra $20 to get the Tourist II with 800 shutter. I still have it. My first 35mm was a Nikkormat FTN bought in 1970 on Kwajalein Island. When the Canon F-1 came out not long thereafter, I made a choice between the Canon F-1 and the Nikon F. I did not choose the Nikon F.

 

[Out to Lunch]

My first camera...I must have been 12 or 13 at the time, was a Lubitel. I don't remember, at all how I got it. I do remember that a local shop did the developing and printing at a price I could afford.

 

[sepiareverb]

In 1969 my family was getting shipped out to Fort Lewis WA from NJ. My grandfather gave me a Brownie Flash 620 camera so I could show him what I did out there. I was 7.

That was updated to a Pony II in 72 when we came back east.

I still have the Brownie, but my Pony has been lost to the sands of time.