A question on 35mm SLR users.

[MattKing]

You forgot 127 - the gift I received in 1964 wen I turned 8 (I think I remember the model correctly):

 

[Alan Gales]

I remember when I was young my Mom's cousin's husband took both of our families picture with an SLR on a tripod. It was sometime in the 70's and he was a bus driver. It wasn't just lawyers, doctors and dentists who owned them.

I sold 35mm SLR cameras at a Venture store which was similar to Target today. I started selling them in 1981. All kinds of people bought them. Most of the people who shopped in the store were middle class. At Christmas time we sold tons of 35mm SLR cameras including Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax. Canon was our biggest seller with Minolta in second.

 

[mdarnton]

I was working in camera stores in the 60s and early 70s. Customers were all over the map. People who wanted better photos than an Instamatic would make would buy a nice camera and learn to use it--mostly lower end SLRs like the simpler Minolta, Practica, Pentax, Mamiya etc. models. At the time there was a definite division between the normal and pro models, which differed by such things as 1/500 vs 1/1000 top shutter speed, self-timer or not, changable prism and screen, fittings for motor drives, etc., and most people off the street would buy the cheaper model, like the Mamiya 500DTL was popular in one shop I worked in, for instance. At another shop I worked in the Canon EX was popular. These weren't complex things--they just did the job.

At the other end, we had the people with money, who spent to spend. We had a dentist who would come in and buy whatever the latest Canon buzzy thing was, and probably had a full Canon F1 kit, all lenses, motors, etc., but didn't necessarily know how to use any of it. I complained to the boss one day, and he said "People like him are the reason you can buy what you want at an affordable price--if they only made cameras for pros, they'd make a lot fewer of them and they'd cost two or three times as much!"

As Paul Howell says, above, there were lots of cheap department store SLRs, too, along the same line as the lowest Canon and Mamiya models, often with Pentax-type screw mounts.

In those days people didn't have the problem with mechanical things that they might have today when everything is electronic.

 

[blockend]

I remember when I was young my Mom's cousin's husband took both of our families picture with an SLR on a tripod. It was sometime in the 70's and he was a bus driver. It wasn't just lawyers, doctors and dentists who owned them.

The change came quite quickly. My parents bought my first SLR, a humble Chinon in 1976, and lots of my friends were getting Nikkormats or Yashica or Fuji SLRs. There was much prejudice against Zenit and Praktica, some of it deserved, some wide of the mark. I only knew one young guy who had an SLR in the early 70s, an SLR was a sizeable investment.

A Nikkormat was approx. £200 in 1975, which is £1916 in 2017. That's more than a new Fuji X-T2 with zoom lens.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

If I take the example of my two long-deceased aunties as prime examples, they were not professionals but very dedicated and fastidious amateur travel photographers.

Both owned a Minolta SRT101, shared several (5?) lenses and were prolific consumers of Ektachrome and Kodachrome in the 1960s and 70s to record their global travels and cruises. The UK, US and Europe were often visited several times in a year as their jobs involved a lot of travel. For a long time I got the impression that looking at them they made photography look very, very expensive stuff. It was all in the image they presented of themselves.

My late 70s encounter with one aunty who came to judge my early endeavours was scathing, holding some of my first Ektachrome slides up against the window: "your greens are not green!" she bellowed disapprovingly. The other said "photography is an expensive hobby". That would have been true in the 70s and 80s for me.

Both were wealthy, with one having an executive position in what was then TAA here in Australia, with secondment to PanAm in the US. The other worked in the fur trade as a Buyer (and died of a hideous disease from decades in that industry), and could frequently be seen with a Minolta slung on one shoulder and a stole on the other! Both smoked Benson & Hedges stuck into elegant gold sticks and dressed smartly in houndstooth-patterned slacks (I never saw either of them in skirts!) with coiffed hair blown back into what was then a stylish statement, but which would today be viewed as satire. They often visited us with their elegant black leather camera cases with HD SC personalised initials embossed on the front.

The Minoltas at one stage were joined by a movie camera of unknown type. They used this to record Trooping of the Colour in London in the early 1970s (it was also photographed on Kodachrome).

Then they died. Their joint estate passed to one aunty's rather haute and ungracious daughter, and it is known all the cameras and slides were thrown out. The daughter had her eyes on the money and house, not the cameras and whatnots (of which plenty had been accumulated by 1988). My mum (one of the aunties was her sister) stepped in and took posession of a few things, including early photographs. She still has several boxes of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides, the thinking of the time long ago that I might find them interesting in future years (I did, decades ago, but not now).

Criticism does much, but encouragement does more. If I learnt a few important things from my aunties, it was these:

• Buy good quality equipment and look after it
• Learn how to use your equipment and to expose correctly; and
• Make sure your greens are green, your blues are blue and your reds are red!

A future professional (aged 4):

In later times, I learnt to mount a camera on a tripod, rather than look 'through' a tripod head...

 

[summicron1]

In the late 60s and throughout the 70s, what were the non-professional camera users like? Were they wealthy or were the SLRs affordable for the common man? What subjects did they shoot? Was it predominantly amateurs or was it families documenting holidays and events?

I have been scouring the internet for this kind of information and someone on reddit informed me of this place. I hope you can help.

Thanks in advance.

Being 67 years old, photography in the 60s is something i have expertise at -- while SLRs were sold then, they were not as user-friendly as the ones today -- lever-wind was just coming in, auto-exposure didn't exist, photography with them was something for the learned, the serious. A good 35mm SLR cost, maybe, $100 or $200 -- but $200 was a week's wages. So the common folk bought cheap, maybe $20.

The regular household was equipped with a Kodak mass-marketed camera of some sort -- a Kodak Starflash, for example. Some sort of box camera letting folks "point and shoot" and Kodak would do the rest. For every SLR sold there were probably 100 Kodaks.

What did folks shoot? The kids at easter, the relatives on birthdays, and random stuff on vacation, although usually not a lot -- the stereotype is Christmas on both ends of a roll with Easter and the Grand Canyon in the middle, and that was on a 12-shot roll. The more user-friendly SLR, especially with auto-exposure, made photography boom like never before becasue they encouraged people to use a LOT more film.

My first camera was a Brownie Starflash, in point of fact, which was the family camera, followed by my own Pony 828.

 

[ac12]

They used EVERYTHING from one end of the spectrum to almost the other.
Roll film (Brownie box, Starmite, folders, etc) , cartridge (Instamatic, then the thin 110 Pocket Instamatic ), 35mm half frame, 35mm rangefinders (Yashica, Minolta, etc), 35mm SLRs (Mamya/Sekor, Pentax, Minolta, Miranda, etc)
For movies, they shot double 8 (16mm film that was shot, then the reel flipped over and shot again, after processing it was sliced in half to make it 8mm wide), single 8, and then Super 8.

And they shot what you expect; some shot selective family stuff (a 10 shot roll could last an entire year), others shot LOTs of family stuff (documenting a lot of events), of course cameras were taken on travel. IOW not much different than today, except no "selfies."

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Contarex? Exakta? Icarex? Praktica? Regula Reflex?

The book I mentioned was published in West Germany so no East Garman cameras were listed. In fact during the period mentioned by the OP East German cameras were not readily available. You could order some thru NYC camera stores that placed ads in Popular and Modern Photography but not from your local camera store. Remember the Cold War was in effect. What cameras that were available were often rebranded.

 

[AgX]

On the diversity topic, here are some formats people were still using from 1960:


Agfa Karat cartridge 1963
Agfa Rapid cartridge 1990s
Orwo SL cartridge 1990

You are wrong with your dating:

The Karat casette is prewar and likely was phased out in the 50s. Agfa introduced the successing Rapid cassette in 1963 (as response to type 126).
Likely it died in the 70s and then a similar cassette, the SL, was introduced by Orwo.

So, we are speaking of 30's to 70's (maybe 80's in ther GDR).

 

[rthollenbeck]

Well one thing is for sure: A lot of those cameras that were really well made are still around taking pictures today.

I wasn't there but people were dabbling in home photography as true consumer level amateurs from at least the 50s forward. All the Kodak 120s like the brownies and later on the Argus C3s. No doubt people had money to spend on such novelties after the war and the time to do it as something less than a serious level.

 

[MontanaJay]

I got my first SLR, an Exacta VX, when I was in high school in the late 1960s, but quickly replaced it with a Nikon F that I bought from a returning Vietnam vet. I stuck with Nikon until the digital era.
But in the late 60s and early 70s, SLRs took off in popularity and everyone was making them. I remember seeing a lot of Asahi Pentax Spotmatic and Honeywell's import version of the same, so that's my guess as the top seller of the time. Through-the-lens metering -- which the Pentax had -- made it popular with the crowds.
But the competition was fierce among Topcon, Mamiya Sekor, Canon, Yashica, Miranda, Minolta, plus a few European exotics like Contarex and Alpa.
It was a fun time. Kodak still made consumer cameras during the period and cheaper Polaroids were also popular, but lots of folks really got into photography as a seious hobby and they wanted an SLR and interchangable lenses.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

Yes, Polaroids. I was about 10 years old and at a friend's house watching TV (our family didn't have one) when I heard a shriek from my friend's mom who was taking a shower. Out of the bathroom comes his dad with a Polaroid camera.

I'm sure that type of candid photography was a selling point.

 

[GRHazelton]

Interesting thread, especially the mention of MDs and dentists. I remember in the mid 1960s shopping at Richmond Camera in Richmond, Virginia (still in business!) the premier shop in the city. A well-dressed man came in with a Hasselblad and asked the counter man to unload the camera, keep the film for processing, and load a fresh roll in. The counter people (all men as I recall) were well-informed and very accommodating. After the customer left I chatted with the counter man, bought something, and expressed surprise that the owner of a serious camera didn't know how to operate it. He said that a lot of "rich doctors" would buy Hassies, etc, since they could afford "the best" whether or not they "deserved" such. His words! I struggled along with a cheap and cheerful Japanese 35mm rangefinder with the ubiquitous f 2 50mm in a leaf shutter. Or did I have my Komaflex S by then....

 

[Nige]

what about the speed (max aperture) of the 50mm lens on the camera?

 

[Alan Gales]

Interesting thread, especially the mention of MDs and dentists. I remember in the mid 1960s shopping at Richmond Camera in Richmond, Virginia (still in business!) the premier shop in the city. A well-dressed man came in with a Hasselblad and asked the counter man to unload the camera, keep the film for processing, and load a fresh roll in. The counter people (all men as I recall) were well-informed and very accommodating. After the customer left I chatted with the counter man, bought something, and expressed surprise that the owner of a serious camera didn't know how to operate it. He said that a lot of "rich doctors" would buy Hassies, etc, since they could afford "the best" whether or not they "deserved" such. His words! I struggled along with a cheap and cheerful Japanese 35mm rangefinder with the ubiquitous f 2 50mm in a leaf shutter. Or did I have my Komaflex S by then....

I was in a camera store back in the early 1980's and a fellow came in and traded in all his Contax RTS gear that he had recently bought and purchased a Leica R series and a bunch of lenses. A salesman told me that the fellow was a doctor and had heard that Leica was a more Gucci brand than Contax. The salesman also told me that he hoped to wait on the fellow in a few weeks when he brought the Leica gear in to trade for Hasselblad.

 

[MattKing]

I must say though, that I have a friend who is both a well liked and respected dentist, and a fine photographer.
And while he might buy very good equipment, he would be sure to learn to use it very well before considering replacing or augmenting it.

 

[blockend]

You are wrong with your dating:

The Karat casette is prewar and likely was phased out in the 50s. Agfa introduced the successing Rapid cassette in 1963 (as response to type 126).
Likely it died in the 70s and then a similar cassette, the SL, was introduced by Orwo.

So, we are speaking of 30's to 70's (maybe 80's in ther GDR).

The dates are when manufacturers phased out the film, not when it was most active.

 

[blockend]

One notable characteristic of our family photos, and I'm sure we weren't alone, was a general decline in image quality. From 1900 to the 1920s the surviving shots are mostly studio portraits, a happy couple sitting in a car or sleigh against a painted studio backdrop, almost certainly taken on sheet film. From then until the 1960s it was 120 box camera shots, soft meniscus lenses, small prints, but high image quality. Then came 126 Instamatic, first black and white, then colour enprints from square 35mm negatives. The tail end of the family collection, with my sister and her heirs (the custodians of family photographs were always women) got better, or at least bigger, with my self printed 10 x 8 SLR shots.

My tribe never went for 110 film but my cousins did, as did many family photographers, and the results weren't spectacular. One cousin was an enthusiastic traveller and amateur photographer and got through reams of film, the results of which were placed in numerous albums. The people and places are barely identifiable, so low was the quality. I suggested she buy a better camera, perhaps an Olympus Trip, but she had an almost phobic reaction to photo technology even though she was a bright woman who could have easily mastered loading a film. This mindset was perpetuated by Kodak who mystified the process by sealing everything in drop in cartridges, and made a heap of money encasing slithers of film in plastic tombs and pushing the medium as literally dark art.

 

[guriinii]

Wow, I've got loads of info to work from here. Thanks for all the help.

There was much prejudice against Zenit and Praktica, some of it deserved, some wide of the mark. I only knew one young guy who had an SLR in the early 70s, an SLR was a sizeable investment.

I can understand the prejudice then, even growing up in the late 80s and early 90s their was still prejudice towards Germany in my parents generation. I have a Zenit-B and Praktica L2.. From what I've been reading, the Praktica L2 was made as an everyday camera.

 

[Dan Fromm]

The book I mentioned was published in West Germany so no East Garman cameras were listed. In fact during the period mentioned by the OP East German cameras were not readily available. You could order some thru NYC camera stores that placed ads in Popular and Modern Photography but not from your local camera store. Remember the Cold War was in effect. What cameras that were available were often rebranded.

Wass you dere, Charlie? I was. And as Quebec license plates say, je me souviens.

More seriously, the Contarex was the Zeiss (Oberkochen) top-of-the-line SLR. The Icarex was their middle class SLR. Regula (King, really) was a West German company. None of them from the east. Exakta and Praktica, both from the DDR, were readily available in the US. Until Nikon introduced the F the Exakta VX was the system SLR.

 

[k.hendrik]

In 1971 I was a student at art-school "graphic design" they had a big photography department. Most of my fellow students owned Pentax, one of the teachers had a Praktica & Pentax the other Hasselblad & Nikon. In the departments' studio we used (school owned)Nikon's and Cambo's 5x7. I had a Ricoh then, before that a Zeiss Ikon box Tengor and a Lubitel II. All three camera's are still working and sometimes used

 

[Chan Tran]

I think there were fewer people with a 35mm SLR back then than people with a DSLR today.

 

[Paul Howell]

My first wife had a Kodak 126 SLR, she shot Verichrome Pan and Kodacolor, picture were sharp with good contrast. I occasionally hear from her, she still had the camera when 126 was discontinued, she got a APS camera, then a digital point and shoot she now uses her smart phone. Her best work was with her Kodak 126 SLR.

 

[BrianShaw]

Interesting thread, especially the mention of MDs and dentists. I remember in the mid 1960s shopping at Richmond Camera in Richmond, Virginia (still in business!) the premier shop in the city. A well-dressed man came in with a Hasselblad and asked the counter man to unload the camera, keep the film for processing, and load a fresh roll in. The counter people (all men as I recall) were well-informed and very accommodating. After the customer left I chatted with the counter man, bought something, and expressed surprise that the owner of a serious camera didn't know how to operate it. He said that a lot of "rich doctors" would buy Hassies, etc, since they could afford "the best" whether or not they "deserved" such. His words! I struggled along with a cheap and cheerful Japanese 35mm rangefinder with the ubiquitous f 2 50mm in a leaf shutter. Or did I have my Komaflex S by then....

What did rich lawyers use?

What did nerdy engineers use?

 

[Harry Stevens]

My farther was a photo nut but he loved the Polariods he bought the best land cameras they made, me I bought a Zorki 4K new for £22.00 in 1977 it was the same mid price point for the Kodak 110 yellow cased all inclusive kits at the time. I bought a Zenith EM new in 1979 for £59.00 which was overpriced but the dealer was old school and top service and only last week the very same camera deliverd a 36 roll of pictures for me.

I gotta a lot of love for Cosina...........