Which camera made you fall in love with photography?

Talus said:
Me almost 20 years ago with my Leica M6 TTL. This camera changed everything for me.


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That's so cool. Apart from the Canon S45 in 2002, the camera that changed photography for me again was the M9. Fifteen years and still going! M9 has taken a back seat to the SL2S for the past few weeks, but the funny thing is that I've been working extra hard to make the SL2S colours like the M9.
 
Archiver said:
That's so cool. Apart from the Canon S45 in 2002, the camera that changed photography for me again was the M9. Fifteen years and still going! M9 has taken a back seat to the SL2S for the past few weeks, but the funny thing is that I've been working extra hard to make the SL2S colours like the M9.
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I had an M9 as well for a bit. Agreed about the look of the images that camera makes. Of all the digital cameras I've used, the M9 with some good Leica glass is something special.

The M6 was my first fully manual camera and the fact that it was so reliable and brought so much joy to shoot with, I loved the feeling of the advance lever and it just felt so good in the hand. Back in those days the bodies and lenses they were expensive, but attainable, and film wasn't crazy expensive either. My friend also worked at a photo lab and he would process all of my films and scan them for free. It was the perfect storm for me. A few years later he moved away and once I started having to pay for my own developing and scanning I realized it wasn't realistic to continue as a poor college student. At that point I hadn't been exposed to black and white photography (along with developing and darkroom printing), so I switched to digital for a while before I could afford to get back into film photography and learn about processing at home. Now it's really all I do.
 
I've owned gear before this but I'd say the Olympus EPL-5 with the Pany 20mm F1.7 around 13 years ago, that was what really made me fall in love with photography, the rendering was something I'd describe as inspiring compared to the fixed compacts available at the time. I loved my Canon G9 before that, still do, but this combination was just better. It's all gone on from there really.
 
A Prinz Mastermatic V, a Dixons (UK camera/tech chain) rebadged Halina 3000. Pretty crappy in the day but not so bad output. A selenium meter which let me get on with learning to judge distance; very handy for later traffic accidents. Then tried to stretch to an SLR, Praktica was on my mind but my parents agreed to top me up to a Canon AT-1 which was later traded in for an A-1. A lot of camera stuff has happened since :)
 
Ray Vonn 2023 said:
I've owned gear before this but I'd say the Olympus EPL-5 with the Pany 20mm F1.7 around 13 years ago, that was what really made me fall in love with photography, the rendering was something I'd describe as inspiring compared to the fixed compacts available at the time. I loved my Canon G9 before that, still do, but this combination was just better. It's all gone on from there really.
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The E-M5 was the camera that turned me into a micro four thirds fan. Prior to that, I'd used either larger sensor DSLR's or the Sigma DP1, or small sensor cams like the Canon S45, S70, Fuji F30 etc. The in-between sensor of the E-M5 plus the tiny lenses gave a level of quality that I could only get in larger cameras.
 
Looking through Mom's Spotmatic was magical and I'll always have a soft spot for my Pentax ME Super.
That said, there are different eras in my life where photography took on deeper meaning, and more of a prominent place. So the order would go from first:
Pentax ME Super
Nikon F3
Nikon F4
Graflex Crown Graphic
Konica Hexar
Leica M2
Mamiya 6
Nikon F2

The very first where I realized I wanted to be a professional was that first Nikon F3.

Phil
 
The first camera I bought after getting "the bug" was a Canon Powershot G9 in around 2007–8. After messing around with that and a Nikon D40, I bought a Nikon FE. I enjoyed shooting the FE in a way I never did with the digital cameras, so I'd say the FE was the one that made me fall in love with photography.

More recently (around 2018–19), I bought a Pentax Spotmatic with a non-functioning meter to use for a "cheap shots challenge" photo contest. Much to my surprise, I found I enjoyed shooting with a meterless camera. I then bought a really nice Pentax SL (basically a Spotmatic without the light meter), had it CLAed by Eric Hendrickson, and have really been enjoying shooting with that camera for the last few years. Lately, the SL seems to be the camera I always keep loaded with film and grab first.
 
While in my early twenty's we were having a child. I had a friend at work ,an exchange engineer from the UK who was into photography. I asked if he could set me up with a camera and film so I could snap some pictures of our child at birth. He set me up with an om1 and 50mm1.4 loaded with some kind of color 400iso film. He set the aperture and speed by estimating the lighting in the hospital. I shot a few frames at the birth using his settings, then finished the roll using the meter. I was amazed at the results and that made me fall in love with photography.
 
For me, it was my Yashica-Mat EM. I bought it at a garage sale just before I started high school. My dad loaned me
the money to buy it, $60.00 USD and I paid him back from my paper route money and what I had earned from doing
yard work. I loved that camera. I used it all through high school for the yearbook and school newspaper pictures as
well as personal work.

Sadly, the camera was stolen a few years after I got out of the Navy. Since I loved working with a TLR, I went to the
local camera shop (remember those?) to find a replacement. They had a brand new Yashica-Mat 124G and an old
Rolleiflex MX-EVS. Since there wasn't much of a price difference, and the Rollei was in really nice condition, I bought
the Rollei. I had never used a Rolleiflex before and there was no manual with the camera. I took the camera home and
loaded it up with film. When I opened the back of the camera, I didn't see a red starting mark in the camera, so I just
lined up the arrows on the backing paper with where the red mark was in the Yashica. I then proceeded to wind the
film all the way through without it stopping at frame 1.

In a panic, I called the camera shop and told the owner that the camera didn't work when I loaded it. After telling him
what had happened, he asked me if I had ever used a Rolleiflex before. After I said that I had not, he laughed and told
me that I probably just loaded it incorrectly, and to bring it back to the shop and he would show me how to load it.
When I returned to the shop, the owner asked me what film I had loaded. He then gave me three rolls of that film for
my trouble and he showed me how to feed the backing paper through the rollers and onto the take up spool. Once
that was done, he explained that the film would then automatically stop at the first frame. That did the trick and I
went out and shot my first roll with a Rolleiflex and was very impressed with the results from the Tessar lens.

I still have the camera today, but it needs a CLA, as the slow shutter speeds are hanging up.
 
Uncle Fester said:
For me, it was my Yashica-Mat EM. I bought it at a garage sale just before I started high school. My dad loaned me
the money to buy it, $60.00 USD and I paid him back from my paper route money and what I had earned from doing
yard work. I loved that camera. I used it all through high school for the yearbook and school newspaper pictures as
well as personal work.

Sadly, the camera was stolen a few years after I got out of the Navy. Since I loved working with a TLR, I went to the
local camera shop (remember those?) to find a replacement. They had a brand new Yashica-Mat 124G and an old
Rolleiflex MX-EVS. Since there wasn't much of a price difference, and the Rollei was in really nice condition, I bought
the Rollei. I had never used a Rolleiflex before and there was no manual with the camera. I took the camera home and
loaded it up with film. When I opened the back of the camera, I didn't see a red starting mark in the camera, so I just
lined up the arrows on the backing paper with where the red mark was in the Yashica. I then proceeded to wind the
film all the way through without it stopping at frame 1.

In a panic, I called the camera shop and told the owner that the camera didn't work when I loaded it. After telling him
what had happened, he asked me if I had ever used a Rolleiflex before. After I said that I had not, he laughed and told
me that I probably just loaded it incorrectly, and to bring it back to the shop and he would show me how to load it.
When I returned to the shop, the owner asked me what film I had loaded. He then gave me three rolls of that film for
my trouble and he showed me how to feed the backing paper through the rollers and onto the take up spool. Once
that was done, he explained that the film would then automatically stop at the first frame. That did the trick and I
went out and shot my first roll with a Rolleiflex and was very impressed with the results from the Tessar lens.

I still have the camera today, but it needs a CLA, as the slow shutter speeds are hanging up.
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Decades ago, when I first owned a Rolleiflex, I made the same mistake loading film. And I, too, was fortunate to have a shop owner instruct me in the proper technique. All this was long before we had the internet to help us!
Now, 'fess up, how many of you Rollei users were flummoxed by the camera's automated film counter system when you first encountered it?
 
For my wife - like many - it was one of these:

images


Chris
 
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