What was your first slr?

[Johnkpap]

Pentax LX bought at a treasure market in 1992 in a black case with accessories (no lenses) for $100.00 ....I really did not know what I had until I found out how to slide the finder off !! Still have it still use it it has shot 1000’s of films has never let me down

 

[BMbikerider]

A Pentax SP500 bought new in November 1971. This one:



For the next 15 years this camera and its 55/2 Super Takumar was all I used. I've added the other lenses only in the last six years or so. I still use the camera. I have made my best photos with it, possibly because it is so simple, its viewfinder is uncluttered, and it has become an extension of me.

A sentiment I can concur with.

Simplicity is a little use keyword.

 

[Arcadia4]

A loan of my Dads Praktica LTL, before receiving my own Pentax P30T which is still in regular use 28 years later (despite a brief swim in the meantime!) .

In 35mm now also use a Pentax Super A and Canon EOS30 which have their pros and cons but I would say that user familiarity (and the lens) is key and the former is where first cameras often win hands down for final image....

 

[Paul Howell]

1966 Spotmatic with 3 lens kit, 50mm, 35 and 135, got it used at a pawn shop in Long Beach Ca. Still have it, need to take it out for a walk.

 

[albireo]

A Nikon F601m. So many memories.

 

[Pioneer]

Minolta SRT 101. Bought it immediately out of high school. Put it on layaway and paid it off a little bit each month. Was stolen a few months later by someone I had thought was a friend.

Replaced it with a K1000 out of a pawn shop in Reno several years later.

 

[foc]

My first SLR was a second hand Praktica (Nova) Super TL with a Mayer Domiplan lens in 1975.
The lens packed in by the early 1980's and the camera was put away.
In 2010 I was cleaning out the attic and I found the Praktica Super TL. After a clean up, the shutter fired perfectly. The light meter didn't work and I stuck a Helios onto it.
Great to see the camera still working after 45 years.

 

[GRHazelton]

A Komaflex S, which is a 127 format leaf shutter box. f2.8 lens, quite sharp. After a while the auto diaphragm stopped closing down, so I set aside and bought a Praktica LTL. I used it heavily, bouncing it off a sidewalk once, still have it, it still works. I then went to Pentax with a gifted K 1000, then a MX, then a LX. Now I mainly shoot Pentax.
If 127 is ever available at a reasonable price I might have the Komaflex CLA'd.

 

[Lee Rust]

Praktica FX.

 

[eddie]

A used Asahi Pentax H3v, with the clip on exposure meter, purchased from a camera store in South Orange, New Jersey in ‘71 ( I think).

 

[patois]

Cheap Minolta I believe.

 

[grahamp]

Voigtlander Bessamatic. Bought used (I am not quite that old). Interesting system - synchro-compur leaf shutter allowing flash to 1/500, non-return mirror, and not exactly quiet. Eventually I was using 35mm, 50mm, and 135mm lenses on it. The 135 was a genuine long focus.

It was eventually replaced by an OM-1MD, and sold in the late 90's.

 

[Roger Thoms]

mine was a Nikon EM

Yep, same here.

Roger

 

[Sirius Glass]

A used Minolta SR-7 in 1977 and took it to Europe.

 

[Joel_L]

Mamiya/Sekor 1000DTL

 

[Chrismat]

Pentax K1000 that I bought in 1982. Always worked, and had it cla'd by Eric Hendrickson a few years ago. I decided to take it to Paris with me a couple of years ago after leaning toward a KX or MX. Have taken it with me on trips all over the country plus two previous trips to Europe, had to take it again.

 

[Paul Manuell]

A Chinon, either a CE4 or CE4S, in the mid '80s

 

[chuck3565]

A RevueFlex TL 25 bought in Amsterdam at Foto Quelle in the mid 80s after my wife's camera was stolen on the ferry over from England. She bounced it off the sidewalk outside a Paris Metro station a few days later, but after a shutter cycle, it continued to function. Still works today.

 

[AgX]

A RevueFlex TL 25

Which is a Praktica MTL5 with other form of prism housing.

 

[Vincent Peri]

My first camera was a Pentax ES II w/ 50mm f/1.4 Takumar lens. I even remember the day I bought it - Nov. 4th, 1974. And thus began my bizarre manic depressive journey through photography.

 

[Jeff L]

Yashica FR bought new. Fully functional and I still have it.

 

[etn]

When I was 7 or 8 my Dad upgraded his Zeiss Icarex 35 to am OM-2 and was generous enough to let me use the Icarex. As the thing does not have a built-in meter I had to learn metering with a Lunasix meter. We only shot slide film back then. My Dad still owns the Icarex (as well as the OM-2, for that matter.) The shutter works but the silver of the prism mirrors oxidized with time and it is hardly usable anymore. I still remember one mistake I did with it: winding the film too fast I ripped off the end of the roll. Fortunately the local lab could open the camera in their dark room and salvage the pics. Lesson learned for the rest of my life.

During the last Xmas holiday I visited the old man and found some of the slides I shot back then. Exposure was generally spot on. Many pictures from our camping vacations, unidentified kids, airplanes, trains - particularly the TGV which just entered service back then in the early 80‘s. As a kid I was overexcited every time I saw one and had to shoot it!

 

[summicron1]

Exa 1a which, I hasten to add, was rated a "best buy" by consumer reports that year, about 1966. Still have it but the shutter curtain has dried to an inoperative state.

 

[cooltouch]

My first SLR was a Canon AE-1, bought in 1982. I don't miss it, though. In fact, I became rather bored and dissatisfied with it after barely a year of ownership. Back then I was of a mindset that the more automation, the better the camera, so about a year later, I bought a Canon A-1. I thought I had arrived, at last, but you know what? I found that I was becoming dissatisfied with the A-1 as well, and it was because of its awkward behavior in manual mode -- an awkwardness shared by the AE-1. It was about this time that I discovered the FTb, which actually was the first REAL SLR I bought, far as I was concerned. And not too long after I bought the FTb, I bought an original F-1 and it was at that point that I knew I had at last arrived. That was about 1985 or so. And to this day, even though I own dozens of different makes, the old Canon F-1 is still my favorite SLR.

 

[Pentode]

After using my father’s Minolta SRT-101 a few times here and there I bought myself a used X-700 in the spring of 1993.

That camera is long gone but I still use a lot of Minolta gear.