What was your very own first camera?

[jjtelecaster]

A Kodak Brownie Fiesta (made for the Spanish market) which I still have.

 

[limr]

While I was growing up, the camera I was allowed to use was I think a Kodak that shot 110. I wasn't allowed to touch my father's Polaroid Land Camera 100 (well, not until I revived it this past summer!) Then I got a Vivitar p&s as a birthday or Christmas gift and had it in college (I can't remember if I used it in high school. Crap.)

But I don't consider those my first cameras, even the Vivitar which was 'technically' mine. The one I consider my first was a Pentax K1000 that I bought for myself as combination college grad/birthday gift. This was early 1993. She's now 20 years old, has been in regular use for that entire time, and is still my favorite camera. I heart my K1000 🙂

 

[DKimg]

Very first camera I owned and used was a Canon A-1 with Canon 28mm 2.8 Lens. The camera that started my photography adventure.

 

[jayhopkins2001]

Kodak Instamatic 44

 

[dannyparrado]

My first camera I get was the Leica M4-P with a Zeiss 50mm 2 ZM I bought six months ago, it's weird to be an 18 year old shooting film when all my friends are shooting digital only.

 

[VisualDarkness]

I got a digital Canon A2000IS for Christmas as my first own one, but the first one I bought (with my brother) was a Pentax K-7.

 

[drivel]

Olympus OM-1 purchased used in 1993.

 

[BronicaLee]

Canon TLb, paid $340 bucks for it at the Camera Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, in '72 or '73. It got stolen two months later, so my Dad got me a FTb in it's place. It's still in the attic at my Mom's house somewhere.

 

[pixelatedscraps]

Mine was a Nikon F2A purchased in 1998 when I was 18 years old and from money I'd scrimped and saved from multiple birthdays, generous relatives, and a particularly bountiful Chinese New Year Lai See packet booty. Picked up a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 Series E (couldn't afford the AIS or *gasp* the 1.4) and all the while in the company of a beautiful Irish girl who was a member of the photography club (I wasn't allowed by strict parents) I'd had a crush on for several months...

 

[meeker]

I seem to recall it was a Hanimex 110 - I must have been in my early teens or possibly younger.

 

[helvetica]

The first camera I purchased was a Holga around 2005. I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed, but I bought it back when it was just a quirky camera, long before "hipsters" ever became a thing. You could say then... that I had a Holga before the hipsters thought it was cool to have before everyone else. My Canon friends point out that makes me something akin to Hipster Prime!

The camera that I really cut my teeth on was a second-hand Nikon D70, followed a few years later by a late-model Nikon F100. On a production of keepers-per-shots-taken ratio, the F100 might be the best camera I've ever owned!

 

[tedwhite]

I may have mentioned it earlier, but my first camera was a Kodak box camera clad in some sort of leatherette. I don't recall the film size but the negative was a long rectangle and I believe the camera was a fixed focus type. Along with the camera came a film developing/printing kit with instructions. I was suddenly a 10 year old photographer.

 

[______]

My dad's Exakta VXiia with Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 50mm f/3.5 T.

 

[marcr1230]

I vaguely recall a Kodak 126 cartridge camera with the 4 sided flash bulbs that would fire , melt and rotate.
That was replaced in about 1971 with my Dad's Contax IIa CD that he bought in the Army in Korea with a 50 Zeiss , 35 Nikkor and 85 Nikkor

 

[Mlehrman]

An Argus C3 from an uncle. I have no recollection what I did with it years ago.

 

[Chris101]

The first camera I purchased was a Holga around 2005. I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed, but I bought it back when it was just a quirky camera, long before "hipsters" ever became a thing. You could say then... that I had a Holga before the hipsters thought it was cool to have before everyone else. My Canon friends point out that makes me something akin to Hipster Prime!

The camera that I really cut my teeth on was a second-hand Nikon D70, followed a few years later by a late-model Nikon F100. On a production of keepers-per-shots-taken ratio, the F100 might be the best camera I've ever owned!

Hipsters have moved on from the Holga. It's returned to a teaching tool, and a toy for artsy photographers. I love mine, and I am certainly no hipster! (Too old for one, and fat.)

 

[Peter_S]

Pentax Espio SW 105.
A really nice camera (particularly with slide film), I took that all over Chile, Argentina and Bolivia for 10 months many years ago, until it was replaced by a Contax TVS III and Sony DSC V-1. I still have the Pentax.

 

[Ed Bray]

Zenith TTL with 58mm Helios f2 lens, bought by my then girlfriend (now Wife) for me for Christmas in 1979.

 

[pete hogan]

Brownie Flash Six-20 (the one with the curved back) about 1951. Well made, took a lot of pictures then returned in those nice Kodak yellow booklets.

 

[benji77]

A chrome Nikon FM2, which I have since sold for a F3HP, which I also sold. Now with a tinge of regret each time I see one on sale.....