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
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 :)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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...
 
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!
 
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.
 
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
 
helvetica said:
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!
Click to expand...

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.)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.....
 
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