What was your very own first camera?

[dxq.canada]

Canon T-70 with Astral 28-70mm and 70-210 zoom, back in the 80's.
I was saving up money to buy either a Schmidt Cassegrain telescope, and realized it costs a lot of money ... so I bought a camera instead.

Don't have it ... sold it long time ago to get a Canon nF-1 and fixed focal length lenses.

 

[Brian Atherton]

Zorki 4 with a f2 Jupiter-8

http://www.sovietcams.com/index.php?-629362375

Bought far peanuts from the Russian shop in High Holborn, London. My first camera, bought with my own money. It began my rangefinder love-affair. 😛

 

[gnuyork]

I voted canon (which was my first SLR, but I forgot about the Kodak point n shoot I got as a young teenager. It was the camera that started it all.

But really it was my dad's Minolta SRT 201-high school days -that really pushed me into the hobby. That's when I did B&W and first developed my own film and darkroom prints.

My dad officially gave me that camera last year, it's mine now, so technically that was my first SLR.

 

[KyleCharles]

Konica S3

Konica S3

My first was a Konica Auto S3. It was given to me for Christmas in 1986. My dad found it in a camera store in the used case. He told me that it was a good camera, and it was. I traded it to a friend for a skateboard a few years later. Wish I still had it!

 

[MrFujicaman]

Kodak X-15-Xmas gift in 1970. Lost it and bought one on Ebay some years back as a keepsake.

Used my Dad's Argus C3 in high school until I earned a Kiev III fall of my senior year helping a camera broker unload a 40' semi trailer full of Kodak 110 Instamatics (20-60 models) . Used that and a C3 with the 100mm my first year of college until I bought a Focal TLR (rebadged Petri FTX) with the 55mm 1.8 for $95 sometime in the spring or summer of 1977.

 

[JoeV]

My very, very first was a 127-format toy camera that came included with the Secret Sam toy spy kit.

But my proper first camera was a Vivitar 110 camera with flash, early 1970s.

~Joe

 

[ElectroWNED]

Sony P-10 point and shoot. 5MP, all automatic, but I used that thing until I died. It got me into photography: I started posting my pictures on DeviantArt, and then I found out about Leicas-- that was obviously far outside the range of a teenager's bank account, so I settled on a Yashica Electro 35 GSN, and RFF.

Maybe the best present I've received from my parents in my lifetime...

 

[news shooter]

First camera was a kodak hawkeye instamatic 1965 vintage. Seems as though shot pics of everything, especially airplanes in late 60's-70's. Worked in a mall where there was a camera store. Went in to hold a dream of the nikon f2 they had. Long story short, my dad co-signed a loan for $650 for body & 50 1.4. Don't have either any more. Would sure like to have a black f2. One of these days! Great memories with that workhorse dream camera.

 

[seascribe]

A Voightlander RF, and they threw in a roll of Plus-x. Traded it in on a new Pentax Spotmatic in 1975(?)

 

[De_Corday]

When I was in High School my mother bought me a Nikon FM-10 for Christmas so that I'd stop stealing her Minolta X-370 every weekend. My uncle threw in an old beat-up Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 that weighed about three times the FM-10. I still have both, though the FM-10 doesn't really see any use.

 

[______]

Aside from Kodak Instamatics, my first camera was a Pentax Spotmatic SP500. I eventually traded it in for an Olympus OM-1. I still use an OM-1 for film photography.

 

[clcolucci58]

Olympus OM-10

Regards,
CLC

 

[Tati]

Mamiya. DSX 1000. Came with a 55mm f1.8 lens. I still have it.

 

[kshapero]

Rollei 35S, then a Minox GL, then the Minolta Hi-Matic 7 SII.

Hi-Matic 7 SII came out in 1977, was considered to be one of the finest Minolta rangefinders. It featured a 40 mm f/1.7 lens and shutter priority automatic exposure in addition to manual controls, all in a compact package. Traveled all over the world with this and my Nikon F.

 

[Archiver]

Kodak "Brownie camera" 110 cassette version, given to me as a present some time in the very early 80's. I still have it, surprisingly enough. It looks like this:

http://www.ozcamera.com/kodak/photo 16/1629.jpg

I also have another 110 camera in a more traditional 110 'bar' shape, but my first 'real' camera was one of the first Kodak disc film cameras, with brushed silver casing. Exactly like this:

http://lowres-picturecabinet.com.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/43/main/13/92333.jpg

 

[KnipsOmat]

What was your very own first camera?

A crappy, manual focus Carena SLR, which was defective three times in it's first year of use and eventually was returned when the third defect turned up. Don't even remember the exact type. Got it as a present from my parents at age 14 in 1980.

It was replaced by a Konica Autoreflex TC, which I still have and still use once in a while. This one was waaaaay more reliable than the Carena. Sparked my interest in Konica SLRs. See http://www.buhla.de/ http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif

The first one to use (not own) was a Berning Robot Junior which my father gave me as a loan, but always made very clear it will remain his... Great camera as well.

 

[fotomeow]

1995- Canon Rebel kit, one of the best selling SLRs of all time (?!)

 

[redhawk]

My very first camera was a Minolta 110 Zoom SLR MkII back in 1986. Even though times were tough my mom and I scrounged up enough to get me one. She thought it would be much more practical than getting into a 35mm system, especially since I was so young. Since film, developing and prints cost more money yet, I learned very early on to be judicious with my shots and not blow through a roll just for the heck of it. The results were just okay but back then it was pure magic to me. It didn't matter what camera I had, just the fact that I had a camera was enough. The next year I upgraded to a plain chrome Nikon F handed down by a family friend. The first pro body I bought myself was a Nikon F4s. I eventually sold it years later but I bought another one last year mainly because I like the design and ergos so much and of course, who can forget the first camera that they bought themselves?

 

[Finglas]

Ricoh 500 ME

Ricoh 500 ME

In 1982 I bought my first camera, a small manual focus rangefinder the Ricoh 500 ME - it was really good for a first camera, had a great fixed 40mm f2.8 lens, full manual exposure and Auto AE with bulb to 1/500ths of a second shutter speed.

I don't have it now, but it taught me most things I needed to learn. The following year in the autumn of 1983 I got my first SLR, the Nikon FE - had that for next 30 years !!

To this day, I still only use manual focus - owner dependent cameras.
I will see if I can attach a small image from summer 1983 - a mirror selfie taken at work WITH the aforementoned Ricoh 500 ME camera - by the way that mechanical watch in the photo, I still have that and it still works great.

 

[CMur12]

I voted Kodak.

My very first camera was a little plastic job, along the lines of a box camera, with a crude eye-level finder that was mail-ordered with a dollar and cereal box tops. I was five or six years old.

I wanted to move up to a "flash camera," so I got a Kodak Duaflex IV for Christmas in 1959 (eight years old). That triggered my love of TLRs.

In college, I wanted to start taking photos again and I got a Minolta Autopak 600 camera that took 126 cartridge film. It was an impressive camera for the money, with a 4-element glass lens, zone focusing, and autoexposure. (The competing Kodak Instamatic had a plastic lens and focus consisting of a slider switch for close-ups.) I started shooting slides with this camera, and I got some good ones.

Shortly thereafter, I wanted to get a more serious camera, so I blew all my money on a demo-model Yashica TL Super with a f1.7 lens. It was with this camera that I learned the basics of photography.

I still have the Kodak Duaflex IV (and a brace of "serious" TLRs), but the Minolta Autopak and the Yashica TL Super are long gone. I still have slides over 40 years old from the Minolta and the Yashica, however.

- Murray