When you were at school did your friends have cameras too

lxmike

lxmike

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Way back in the late 1970s, my schooling coming to an end, (before university loomed), I became obsessed with photography, I got serious by about 1979/80, I carried a Pentax MX and my bedtime reading was the small Pentax lens book that came with all Pentax cameras. A few of my friends were into photography too and I remember what each of them carried even after all these years, my best mate Chris had an Olympus XA, (bought new at Bonsers Newcastle upon Tyne), coupled with a Minolta 110 mk1 SLR. John, whose family were not short of a penny or two, had a Nikon FM, likewise Dave Vasey had a Nikon EM, others, carried Praktica's and Chinon's, and finally Joe Corrigan had anOlympus OM10, (Which I hankered after. Anyway, it made me think, what did other people and their friends carry during their school days. I nearly forgot, a girl in my class had an older brother called Paul, he way way older than us and very cool, a bit of a hippie, a surfer and a mountain climber, he carried a Rollei 35...this blew my mind when I first saw it. Looking forward to hear what other people carried during the school years?
 
In school I started off with a SRT-101 and then later on a N2000 for the aperture priority. Most of my friends were in the photography club and we spent much of high school in the darkroom thanks to our advisor writing passes for us to get out of study hall.

One had a F3 (and a follow focus Novoflex rig), another had a Topcon, an AE1 program and then a couple of other model SLRs I can't recall.. think they were Nikons although maybe another Minolta SRT in there too. At one point someone donated a Pentax 6x7 with the 105mm to the school and it ended up as part of the darkroom equipment. We were all astounded at that thing.

Darkroom has two 35mm Omega's and a much larger Bessler. Don't recall the model but it would handle MF, had a crank on the side to raise/lower it and it could pivot 90 degrees to project on the wall.

I can still smell the fixer......
 
Not really...you had to be a Sophomore in high school to take the Photography class (1975).
The class had a bunch of Kodak 126 Instamatic cameras one could borrow. If you were good enough you might be able to checkout one of the two or three Minoltas bodies they had too.
I do remember a Senior Teacher's Aide having a Nikon F2, my parents bought me my first real camera (Vivitar 400SL) so I used that my Junior/Senior years...my good buddy Brett H. had a Vivitar 250SL and another classmate had something, might have been a Nikon...not a lot of students had their own SLRs...
Darkroom wise most enlargers were Vivitars, there was one Omega (for MF) and a Beseler 4x5...

After high school I bought my own first cameras...Two black body Pentax MXs...I still have those bodies along with the owner's manuals and the booklets showing all the different lenses and accessories...
 
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Nobody had cameras in the lower grades below university level. Nobody.

At 12 years old in the early 1960’s I was unique in having saved enough money to buy a simple 8mm ciné camera. I also used simple 127-format cameras. There were no photography activities at school.

I knew of no kids or even adults interested in photography - the exception being my grandmother’s neighbor: a lady who subscribed to photography magazines and would give some to me - I still have them!
 
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None of my friends had any cameras. My cousin had a zenit 122 and I had a Praktica. Later on, at year 12, some other kids had some free focus p&s compacts.
Somewhere in the early 90s my brother came for holidays from the UK where he was studying and brought a OM-10 with the manual adapter. Brought some slides also he took in the Lakes District - I was fascinated. That's where my fascination with the OM system started.
 
During High School in the early 70s, the only SLR I recall seeing was the school yearbook photographer’s Spotmatic. I received a Kodak Pocket Instamatic (110) for my 16th birthday. At age 19, I was able to use my father’s Voigtlander BR and learned Sunny 16. Still have that BR.
 
When I first walked into high school, I discovered they had a fully equipped student darkroom that wasn't being used by anyone. I promptly took it over for the duration as no one else was interested in running it. All were welcome to use the darkroom, but of the 1500 students at that school, only 3-4 seemed to have any long term interest in photography.

This was the '70s, Mid-range Canon SLR's and Spotmatics were the main cameras kids might have (Nikkormats were more expensive, and Nikon's prohibitively so), one of my friends had a Braun Paxette, . I started out with a fixed-lens RF, but eventually raised enough to buy a Pentax Sv. The School also had a late model Rolliecord which I checked out every September and returned every June.
 
Luxury. Back when I was a lad all we had was a shoebox for a camera body, a piece of broken glass for a lens, and a dry oak leaf for film.
 
Using cameras in late 970s when I was in university was not even on the list of priorities, film and processing cut too deeply into beer money
 
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I don't remember the kids owning any, but my high school had a pile of Nikon F & F2's that students in various classes could use. I graduated in 1982. In that same time frame my mother upgraded to a Canon AE-1 from her Instamatic and took classes as part of her course work at the University. I bought my first camera - an AE-1 Program w/the 50/1.8 - from the PX in Germany in 1983. I made the mistake of later selling it for a Rebel XS with a s**t kit zoom that only succeeded in convincing me I needed a real camera and that set me on a thashing course that slowly led me to where I am now with my D7100 & Leica M 240.
 
Dear lxmike,

When I was in junior high circa 1974 my friend Pete got an Exakta RTL1000 as a birthday gift. I thought it was cool, almost as cool as my grandfather's Nikon FTN in a weird sort of way.

I got by with an Kodak Instamatic and a Polaroid 600 camera I won by selling more Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper subscriptions than any of the other paperboys in my region. But for Christmas one year my mom and dad saw how much I loved to take bad pictures got me a pretty darn good camera. I became the Murphy family photographer because I got a brand new Canonet 28 and Canolite D that served me well until I went away to college.

I wish I still had that camera!

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂
 
None until I went to Brooks Institute of Photography. There it was 4x5 view cameras which we all had.
Later, while working on an MA in graduate school it was all SLRs, Nikon F, Canon FT, Pentax Spotmatics and Minolta 101
 
My roommate in college sophomore year came to school with an OM-1, with the 50/1.8 of course. During Christmas break 1976-77 my father took me to buy an FT2 (black) -- I remember seeing the ad in the paper and was chagrined to find that it came with the 50/2, not a 1.2 as I had thought it said. So my roommate had a faster (barely) lens. But I don't recall seeing others with cameras -- didn't seem to be a popular activity around campus.
 
I started making photos when I was 8 yo.

By the time I got to High School (1968), I was already experienced with the Minolta 16P I bought for myself, and my grandfather loaned me his 1947 Rolleiflex. I joined the camera club, or "Photo Staff" as we called it ... we supplied photos for the school newsletter and the yearbook. I bought (with the help of an uncle) my first Nikon F Photomic FTn in my second year. I also became the Photo Staff Chief that year.

Most of my friends were either guys in the Photo Staff (all of whom had cameras or borrowed cameras from the Photo Staff cabinet), or students or teachers around the school I photographed. A couple of the guys from the Photo Staff are still friends today, and still do some photography; one has a job doing it, occasionally.

There were many times in my life when I barely had money to buy dinner, but in my life after I started High School there was never a time when I didn't have at least one camera. 🙂

G
 
I got my first serious camera, as a sophomore at the University of Washington, in the spring of 1972. It was a killer deal on a demo model Yashica TL Super. I really wanted a Pentax Spotmatic II, but it was WAY out of my price range. The Yashica, similar to the Pentax, had an M42 lens mount and stop-down metering. It was wonderful.

Shortly thereafter, my girlfriend bought a new Hanimex Praktica with similar specs.

Otherwise, I didn't know many students with cameras.

- Murray
 
I was in school in the 50s and 60s. Small country school, mostly poor kids with zero money. No one had "good" cameras. I had a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, about as much of a camera of anyone I knew at the time. My parents always admonished me to not waste film so I didn't take many pictures with it. I did not become interested in photography until after I had graduated college and had been employed a few years--able to afford a real camera.
 
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