Do you remember your first?

Camera, that is. (If there's a thread about this, please just let me know. I searched but didn't find one.)

I don't remember what kind of camera my very first camera was, but I distinctly remember what I did with it. I decided that with my first roll of film I wasn't going to take the "ordinary" pictures people took. No, I was going to take pictures of other things. Needless to say, when I got the developed pictures back, it was a tremendously boring group of pictures. :) I still grin when I think about that.

Do you remember your first camera?

120 Brownie

NIkon D60... I'm relatively new to the game!

Barbara, as a child I had a Kodak brownie. I can still remember some of the photos I made with it. But I was just a child with a camera, not a photographer. Later, I had various 126 (I liked that square format) and 110 (awful) instamatics. With these I made atrocious family snapshots.

In 1984 I inherited my father-in-law's Minolta SRT-101with a 58mm f1.4 lens. A fine workhorse of a mechanical 35mm camera. (I still have it) So began my passion for photography.

Now we have our computerized digital wonders, but I still get nostalgic for the feel of a good, all metal, all mechanical camera. ( I also have an old Nikon F2 - great camera) I can't imagine going back, but wouldn't it be great to have a newfangled camera with that old feel of metal knobs instead of plastic buttons.

Sigh

Brownie for me and then I purchased a Pentax K1000. I loved that camera and used it for many, many years. Even when I went to Europe for the first time and thought I had shot a whole roll of film, only to find out that the film never advanced. I could have sworn I watched the numbers advance in that little window. Oh well, I have the images in my head, and those never go away.

not counting all the $20 kodak point and shoots, a Nikon FM2, all manual everything. The guy in the camera store did right by me. I didn't know a thing about cameras and he sold me something that forced me to learn. Today with my autofocus, auto-exposure (and potentially auto-everything) set up, I'm sure glad to have that background to help me understand what I'm doing.

Oh !!!. Owning a Camera when I was a kid was unheard of (in India) for middle class family (my family barely managed to make it to the middle class).

My first camera was a Yashica Point and Shoot I bought once I started working.

My first camera was a Vivitar 110, which I won at a baseball game.

I got to play with my father's Rolleocord, which I still have on my shelf.

My first purchase was a Canon A-1 and Canon AE-1

Funny you should post this Barbara, this was my intent for an upcoming Weekly Challenge, although it's not til 2011. But the intent was to show your first image (nature related of course) taken with your first camera - say, your first ever film camera, your first digital, or perhaps even your first large format image.

Anyway, this caused me to do some hunting and pecking on the web to try and remember the name of my first camera. Of course, this shows our age now... doesn't it?

My first camera was a Kodak "Hawkeye Instamatic II". It took 126 size film and my first real experience with nature photography was taking pictures in Glacier National park while on a family trailer vacation!

My Dad let me borrow is 35mm Yashica rangefinder, but my first purchase was a 35mm Pentax ME Super. I loved that little camera! I've had Canon and Nikon, but finally settled on the 4x5.

Great topic!

Lon

Pentax, K1000 35mm film. Purchased it in 1988, from the base PX, Panzer Kessern, Boeblingen, West Germany(just Germany now). Took it and walked out into the forest to shoot macros of wild mushrooms!


Chris

My first camera was a Nikkormat FT2 that I bought in 1977 at LaBelle's, a department store in Phoenix, Az. Even though it was a demo (and a good deal as I remember), because those Nikkormats were built like tanks, it lasted me many years until succumbing to one too many dunks in tundra ponds and streams of western Alaska. I had even epoxied the mount back on after one particular incident involving me, the camera, and gravity and it still worked for awhile. They sure built 'em well back then.

Interesting topic!
My grandfather was the brother-in-law of Dr. Edwin Land, and was very interested in photography himself. I followed him and his Polaroid Land camera around, as he shot images around Lake Erie, where I grew up.
I got my first Brownie as soon as I could hold it, but did not get overly interested myself in photography until college, and not compulsively bitten until digitals came out.

Sandy r

Argus C3 35mm camera; one of the first 35mm cameras, I believe. Range finder, fixed lens, f4.5. Given to me by my parents when I was in high school, about 1,000 years ago. Well, 1966, anyway.

My first was a Baldamatic 35mm RFDR that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 13 years old. It was the first step in a 50 year journey that I really feel has been coming to fruition only in the last several years. I wouldn't have missed one bit of that journey for all the money in the world.

Kodak box brownie, 620 roll film, I was ten years old. I had a 'bug' collection in the shed and attempted to take pictures of tadpoles in a jar, from about six inches away!!
I'm still trying

Hey! I've been using a c.1959 Kodak Hawkeye Brownie Flash all summer now. No kidding!


Kent in SD

Fun thread!
First camera: my fathers Exacta 35mm (he had a nice 400 mm lens too)
FIrst one i bought: Ricoh 70mm zoom p&s
First DSLR: Digital Rebel (the original 6 mp version)
Lon--thanks for that hint--now i wont be able to sleep until 2011...

My first camera was an Agfa which I found.

In 1962 I bought a Pentax SLR which had an incredibly sharp lens.

In 1969 I bought a Nikon SLR and then a Nikkormat for a second camera.

II was still a lousy photographer !!!

I moved over to Canon in the 80's.

My first digital camera was an Epsom - somewhare around 1998.

I now shoot Canon - used high end bodies.

The first camera I purchased was an Olympus OM1 when it was first introduced. My parents gave me a Brownie when I was a pre-teen but I never developed an interest until after college.

Lon, that will be an interesting challenge - I seriously doubt I could find any copies of the first few rolls of film from the OM1, though I know they were from the Three Sisters Wilderness area in Oregon.

Barbara, thanks for starting this thread. javascript: x()

Pencil and paper.
Kodak 110 Instamatic in 1969. I developed and printed myself using my Dad's darkroom.
Over the years:
Kodak 110 Instamatic
Sears 35mm
Pentax K-1000
Nikon F2AS
Nikon F3 (used for about 20 years)
Nikon D100 (2002-2006)
Nikon D200 (2006-present)

A short side story.
My father was a studio photographer back in the 50's. He would print I think in Duotone. Then he would sit and hand tint each photo. I faintly remember him using Q-tips and small tubes of many different colors of some type of paint. He had to record every color of the customer's clothing, skin tones, eye color and hair color. It was such an art that I'm sure is a thing of the past. That tinting can be done in photoshop these days but not with the same outcome.
Oh, he used a twin-lens Mamiya reflex camera.

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie I received in either the 3rd or 4th grade. I still have some of the images today. My first "real" camera was a Nikon F made in 1964. I bought it used from a News Photographer in 72. It was a great camera; in fact, I kept it until 2 years ago when I finally sold it for $100 for just the body. I only paid $200 for the body and lens when I first bought it so I would say I definitely got my money's worth out of it.

Neat idea and good question, Barbara. My Dad helped me build/create a pin-hole camera and I remember using it to take a picture of a leaf. I'm sure Dad did most of the work and the image wasn't much more than a silhouette.
Then, at some point, I inherited my folks Kodak Brownie. Lots of memories of snapshots taken along the way ...

Carol

My first camera was a Kodak 110 Instamatic which I shot alongside my father who had a Leica. My first SLR was a Nikkormat FT3 which lasted me for about 30 years until my brother turned me on to digital photography. Once that switch was made I started with a Nikon Coolpix 995, then went to a Digital Rebel XT and now a Canon 5D. I blame my brother for all the money I now spend on digital equipment, but take full credit for all the beautiful digital images I take

A fun topic!

Can't recall any of the Instamatic point-and-shoot things from childhood, so I'll start with my adult life.

A Kowa 35mm fixed lens reflex, bought used from a co-worker in 1970.

My first real camera: Nikkormat FTn in May 1973 - $160 new body only from NYC. I've had Nikon cameras and lenses ever since, upgrading slowly as technology offered auto exposure, built-in motor drives, auto focus, and now digital. I'm still using a manual focus 200/4 Micro Nikkor that I bought new in 1980 on my D200.

Olympus OM1, which was borrowed from my dad. I finally got my own camera, a Canon Elan IIE, about ten years ago.

Max

Great thread! I started by borrowing my Mom's Kodak, then my Dad's Olympus. I was finally "borrowing" it enough, that at Christmas of '80, I received a Canon AE-1. I kept that and a second body humming until 4 years ago and I switched to a Nikon D200. I'll start rooting through the shoe boxes to find an image I can scan for the 2011 challenge!

35mm Mamiya/Sekor 500TL with a 50mm Mamiya/Sekor lens. I bought it at the Simi Valley Swap Meet in 1977 and took it on many backpacking trips in the late 70's and 80's. I still have it today, along with all the slides I took using it.

Rudy

My first camera was a Petri 35mm that I purchased at the NATO base in Naples, Italy in 1976. I do not remember the model but I shot only slides (I still have them) since they where easy to store under our bunk. I had that camera for many years before getting into the Minolta Maxuum series of 35mm's and went digital in 2000 with the Minolta Dimage 7.
Regards,
Jim

Kodak Fisher Price 110 camera.

Kodak 110 Instamatic growing up. Didn't get a different camera until 2000, when I picked up the Oly D450 digital camera. Kept that until 2005 when I got "serious" about photography and bought a Kodak P850 and then the P880 before finally getting the Canon 30D/50D/7D.

Kodak 110 Instamatic

Jim H. : I had a Petri that I bought at Clark AB in the Philippines in 1967. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic from about 1963. I remember taking shots on my first hike up Mount Whitney that September.

Yikes! I am old, huh?

--P

I used an assortment of drug store and hand me down cameras (instamatic, disc, polaroid) at times growing up. My first "serious" camera was an Olympus OM-2 purchased in '82. Later on I added an OM-4 and used those two bodies until 2004 when I went to Canon digital. That OM-4 is a great little camera and I still have it in the closet somewhere.

My first camera was an Agfa Billy, a folding camera, it used to give 8 frames from 120 roll film.
Second was Zeiss Ikon.
Jagdeep Rajput

Interesting thread. I was given a used AGFA box comera when I was in the third or fourth grade. I believe that it used 120 film. One of the cameras I had between than and now was a Yashica 1/2 frame 35 mm range finder. Anyone know where I can get new mounts for this odd format?

Good thread. For me it started in about 1978 with a Minolta XE-5 SLR, followed in reasonably short order by an XD-11, X-700, and finally an XK (my first fully professional body).

I switched to Nikon sometime in the late '80's and began with an F4 and F801, followed by an F6 and F100.

I switched to digital in about 2003/2004 with a D1, followed rapidly (in the digital way) to a D2H, D200, D2x, D2xs, D3, D300, D700, D3s.

My next purchase? A D7000 is en route now, and I'll be going with one of the following in the next year (which one(s) depends on the specs of the new cameras coming this spring: D3x or D4 or D4x...

It never ends...