What was your very own first camera?

What was your very own first camera?

  • Leica

    Votes: 25 2.2%

  • Kodak

    Votes: 228 20.2%

  • Canon

    Votes: 156 13.8%

  • Nikon

    Votes: 132 11.7%

  • Agfa

    Votes: 24 2.1%

  • Pentax

    Votes: 97 8.6%

  • Olympus

    Votes: 66 5.9%

  • Contax

    Votes: 8 0.7%

  • Another - too many to list all so please tell us

    Votes: 392 34.8%
  • Total voters
    1,128
First camera? A Minolta Hi-Matic my mom gave to me back in the late 1970's. It was a scale-focus model, difficult to use. It got lost in a move many years ago. I don't miss it.

When I was a little older, I got a Nikon FG purchased in 1983 with my father. Great little camera and I still have it. It's as small as a Leica M, very easy to use, 100% alloy body, full Auto and Program modes. They don't go for much on the used market these days, but they're beautiful (and underrated) cameras, IMHO.
 
A Zeiss Ikon Ikonta folding camera for 120 film. No rangefinder, so I learned to work with depth of field from the get-go. My father gave me the camera when I was in my teens. He probably bought it in the 1940s.
 
Argus C3, Rangefinder, 1964.

Still have the negative from one of the first rolls I developed.
 

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Growing up, I used to sneak away to dad's closet to fiddle with his "HANDS OFF!" Nikkormat EL with a 50/1.4 and ever-ready case in the early '70's.

I loved the feel, the heft, the seeming complexity, everything about it -even the smell!

FFWD to the 80's and college and that camera was handed over unceremoniously to me as dad opted for AF for his aging eyes.

I still have the camera... dings, dents, scratches, fungusy lens, and that wonderful smell! It still works perfectly! (I did source a mint 1.4 to keep the old girl going).

It is the ONLY camera I will never part with!
 
The first camera I bought with my own money (earned working part-time at the local K-Mart in high school) was a Minolta XG-1 with the 45mm f/2 "pancake" ca. 1981 (I put that in quotes as it's not really as "pancake-y" as some "pancakes", if you know what I mean)

I still have it, though the film advance gave up the ghost in '85 (just after I got off the plane in LA on my first solo overseas trip... luckily I had a friend's Canon T-70 bought duty-free that he'd already okayed me to use on the trip if necessary). I never got around to getting it fixed as I subsequently bought an X-700 which seems much better made/finished and is still going strong after an overhaul and new capacitors. Ditto for the well-used X-570 backup I bought that turned out to be even nicer to use than the -700 (because of the way the meter works, and that for some unknown reason the shutter/mirror in the -570 is noticeably smoother and quieter).

Last time I looked at the ol' XG-1 the foam seals had decayed horribly. The lens is a cracker, though! Still near mint despite a lot of mileage and though it does not test very well on flat targets at close distances I have taken some of my favourite landscape and travel pics with it.

Maybe I will send the XG-1 off for repair after all ;)
 
My very first camera that I bought with my own money [prior I used family cameras] was a Polaroid One Step, white with the little rainbow on it, I was in my early teens.
 
My first was a minolta xd-11 with a 50 1.2 I still have it, and its a nice little camera, but as soon as I bought my m6 i havent gone back :)
 
Rollei 35, German made.

My mother was into photography and made an early 1970's trip to Europe where she discovered this camera, and bout a few of them. I was only 8 when she taught me how to use one copy and it pretty much became mine. I think there was a Kodak Instamatic with bulbs before that, but not that I remember like I remember the tiny Rollei.
 
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