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The First Roll...

BradleyK

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Preface: This question "popped" into my head after reading the thread re "first serious camera."

Although the first camera given to me (a Christmas gift from the parental units when I was eight or nine, perhaps a little older?), was a Kodak (model unknown, but I believe it shot 127 format film?), photography was not something I took with any degree of seriousness until I was in junior high school (middle school, to our friends on the south side of the 49th), and enrolled in what was then called "industrial arts" (one of a limited number of electives that one could study outside the usual - mandatory - academic stream). The course was a year in duration, during which one learned pneumatics, electrical, typesetting/design and photography (i.e. about 10 weeks per area). With the exception of the unit on photography, the balance of the studies have been long consigned to the furthest reaches of my memory.

The photography unit had both breadth and depth: one learned everything from shooting (camera operation and the relationship between shutter speed and aperture, depth of field, the effects of different shutter speeds), to the uses and looks of different lenses, to the different types of film available and their purposes, to film processing, to the rudiments of printing. How much did I retain? Well...the camera was a Nikkormat (sorry, can't remember the model), the lens was a 50mm Nikkor, the film supplied for the course was Tri-X (exclusively, but, as I noted above, we were made aware of the manifold options available), we used D76 for processing the film, the paper was from Kodak (again, sorry, can't recall the name) developed in Dektol, and the enlarger was an Omega (model unknown) .

So...let me throw open some questions (testing the memory, folks): What was the first film that you shot (when photography was something more than a passing fancy)? What did you use for developer? What camera did you use? What paper did you print your masterpieces on?
 
It was almost certainly FP4 (the year was 1970) in an anonymous Agfa folder that I painted bright red (not for any particular reason) and my subject matter was Victorian mine engine houses in Cornwall. Had it developed in Boots the Chemist - didn't start developing until 1973.
 
127 Verichrome Pan in a Brownie Starflash. I developed it in whatever had come in the Sears home developing kit received for Christmas 1968. Probably a Kodak Hobby Pack.
 
Gotta be some FP4+ shot in a black Spotmatic (Mark I). Developed in some really exhausted ID-11 that I now looking back on it am suprised it even worked. Printed on some Ilford Multigrade RC.
 
My first camera that I remember (I was in elementary school) was a Kodak Instamatic. My first roll of film was a roll of 126 Kodachrome 64.
 
My first experience with roll-film was Polaroid Type 20. That was about 1968. I'm sure everyone recalls having to coat Polaroid prints. Wasn't that the most wonderful smell?
 
Kodachrome 64 loaded into a Yashica Electro 35. Mostly for projection, but the first really good one printed by a lab on Cibachrome.
The colours were fabulous.
 
Boy, I'm really young... First roll was about two years ago; film was Kodak Ultra 200 (slowest film the Walgreens carried). Developed at Walgreens - process only.
 
Instamatic 127 Kodak Camera and Film. I think film was costing too much money , really too much. I was 7 years old at 1978.
 
I also got to take Photography as a class in high school - it was an art class and we had a darkroom. I used my dad's Pentax H1a, Tri-X, D-76, and printed on Kodak RC (whatever the letter was for semi-matte, that was the one I liked) - think it was Polymax II. This would have been around 1983ish.
 

That would be "N".

Hard to pick a single roll.

The first darkroom related roll was 616 Verichrome Pan developed using the see-saw method in the developer included in a Kodak Tri-Chem pack.

It was contact printed - on Velox if I remember correctly.

I got the whole shebang, along with a Kodak folder, for my 11th birthday.
 
My first camera, was a Kodak brownie star flash.

My first real "serious" camera was a Yashica TL Electro X. First roll of film was Kodak Tri-X. Because B&W was the only thing we could develop and print, in the dark rooms in Vietnam. Tri-X because I thought faster film was better. Stop the action and all that. Took many pictures of friends standing around, with that stuff.


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The first camera I used seriouly was a Canon F-1. I started with T-max and T-max developer. Used Ilford paper.

Jeff
 
I had a Brownie (Holiday, I think; was my mom's when she was a kid). This was pre-digital, and I was probably under 7 years old. The 127 color film was sent out for processing - I don't remember any details. It was not a passing fancy, though, I really wanted a camera so I could take pictures.

In the 8th grade I took a photography class through my school, and used a loaned 35mm camera. Again, I don't remember the film, chemicals, etc., but I do have the prints we made. They did let us (with a lot of their help) do the developing and printing.
 
The 1st film I developed was 126 Verichrome Pan shot in an Instamatic 104. Polycontrast F 8x10 was my 1st paper. Chemicals were D-76, Dektol & Kodak fixer. 1968 was the year.
 
First camera and film: Kodak Verichrome Pan 127 in a Kodak Brownie World's Fair Flash Camera, circa 1967.

First real camera and film: Minolta SRT 102, Tri-X, HP4, FP4, whatever the student bookstore had in stock in the mid 1970s. Color was always Kodachrome 64.
 
My first roll in my first camera:
High Speed Ektachrome in my Canon Ftb w/FD 50 f1.8 Aug 1971 Chicago.Felt like I had been given the keys to Heaven!
Gary

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My very first was a roll of Plus-X Pan shot through my grandfather's Leica M3. I developed it myself in my father's little darkroom. It was underexposed because my metering was horrible and the prints were universally lifeless. But they were mine.

So here I am, 35 years later rebuilding my own little darkroom and I still have my grandfather's Leica M3.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
 
126 Verichrome Pan in an Instamatic. I'm guessing D-76 was the developer. 1970, age ten.