special camera, special photos

[OlyMan]

So today my twin boys started their very last year at high school. Took the obligatory 'final first day at school' photo, with the same camera I used to capture their 'first day at high school' shot. Which was also the same camera I used to take their 'final day at primary school' shot a few weeks before that, and their 'first day at primary school' shot, seven years earlier. It was also the same camera which took their first ever photographs when they were a mere 12 hours old, two frail little bodies in incubators barely 4lbs each with pipes out their noses and arms, having been born nearly 8 weeks premature. I also took photos with it on their first birthday, their 10th and their 13th, but in-between I confess I've missed a few and have relied on Mrs OlyMan taking photos with her digital camera.

Yeah I guess my OM-4Ti is probably a bit more than just a camera to me. It's been my tool of choice for documenting various key milestones in their lives. I'll probably use it to take photos of them going to their high school prom, and if film remains around long enough, I will probably use it to take their Uni graduations and even wedding photographs, should they choose to find a soul-mate and marry.

Anyone else have a camera which to them is 'more than just a camera', or do people tend to chop n change quite frequently?

 

[btaylor]

I have 2. The OM1n I got for my college graduation and a Rolleicord V I bought shortly thereafter. From before the kids birth to 32 years later, dad pulls out one of them to document important moments. I hate being sentimental about gear, but there it is.

 

[Down Under]

Two of my Nikkormats are older than my two stepsons, who have completed their university studies and are now establishing themselves in good professions.

My Rolleiflex E23.5 predates the birth of my partner. May I add, both are still in active use and functioning well,as are the aforementioned Nikkormats.

One or two old cameras in my collection actually predate me.One is still being used. The other is a shelf queen. And I am - well, never mind. Definitely not shelf queen material!

Good cameras purchased new and maintained will easily last a lifetime. Even with the utmost in positive thinking, I have rather less confidence in my Nikon D700 and D90.

 

[anfenglin]

It is ugly and a beater but I would never give it away. "It" being a Seagull-DF-102B, this exact one:

Seagull DF-102B by 安峰林, auf Flickr

I bought it in 2011 in Beijing while on a stay there to intensify my chinese. I wanted to replace my crappy digital Casio Exilim and took the plunge nd I have stuck with film ever since.
I now even work in an online shop specialised in analog equipment, learned to repair gear, develop my own film etcetera.
All thanks to the wonderful pictures I got from that thing, mostly on Kodak Gold 400, no meter, just guessing.
From time to time I take out the print I got developed in a Kodak lab even on capus and I admire them, most shot were badly off exposure wise but the machines they had there managed to get a lot out of my shots.

 

[OlyMan]

Glad I'm not on my own then.

There will come a time sooner than later when my 35mm cameras probably become little-used museum pieces; where I live it's already a challenge finding somewhere to develop film locally, and it's only going to get harder. While there are various mail-order options, posting film in the UK adds significantly to an end-to-end cost which is already expensive, because in recent years they have to be posted as a package not a letter, which triples the cost.

When that time comes I will probably pare-down my collection, because on the whole I have no interest in keeping cameras as ornaments that I can't use. But I will always keep my OM-4Ti, my OM-10QD (my father's last SLR), and my '69 Trip 35 (same year as my birth)

 

[dasBlute]

If I had only one camera [ha!] it'd be my Rolleiflex