Your FIRST 35mm Camera...

[gnashings]

This place was looking a bit dead...not much doing, so i thought this might be fun. Lets see what all you folks cut your teeth on - what was your first 35mm camera!

Here is me: this little East German thing that you had to walk ten steps away from your subject to be more less in focus! Then you wound the little wheel until it stopped. As far as I recall, your legs were the only adjustment.

But the first real 35mm (I had a Lubitel after that) camera was a Zenit ( I forget which letters - I think MF - it had a photo-cell light meter over the lens). It still works although the rewind knob broke and I cant locate the pieces to fix it (and I just realized that I can't locate the camera... wife cleaned the place...it can be anywhere... it may be in YOUR house!). Pretty good for over 20 years of use!

Hope everyone has fun recollecting!

Peter.

 

[mikebarger]

mine was a baldinette folder

mike

 

[Andy K]

My father bought my brother and I a pair of Zorki 4Ks for Christmas '76. Still got it and it's still going strong.

 

[micek]

Olympus OM1n. I was 16. I am 43 now and it is still my only 35mm slr. The more cameras I use, the more I like it.

 

[Magnus W]

The first one

It was a Canon AE-1. I was sixteen and had used my fathers Diax 1a, and Agfa Isolette up until then. A few years later I traded my Canon equipment for a Pentax LX that I'm still using, 25 years later.

-- MW

 

[TPPhotog]

Zenit EM with the standard lens + a 135mm telephoto, all brand new out of the box Sadly I no longer have it as it was lost during my first (and only at the moment) divorce Some things you want to lose others you don't

 

[removed account4]

pentaxk1000 -
it has a bit of duct tape on it and works as well as it did
whin i got it in 81'

 

[shyguy]

my first 35 was a old nikon if i recall, that my father used in ww2.

S

 

[B-3]

An Olympus OM-10. My father bought it for me and stressed the importance of the manual operations. After taking it along on many backpacking trips and all the way to dusty Africa, I took it in for a CLA. The dealer charged me 20 dollars just to look at it, told me that it was hopeless and beyond repair, and that it would cost me another 20 dollars to get it back. I was young, broke, and naive, so that was the last I saw of the OM-10 and it was the end of photography for me for a long while.

Several years later I finally bought a used Pentax K-1000. Lovely camera, but I'm mostly using a Yashica TLR these days. I'm sure I'll trot it out again, maybe even for a little CLA. But now I'm a bit wiser.

 

[Paul Sorensen]

I had some house brand from Cambridge in New York. I think it was Russian, but I can't really remember. It had a Pentax screw mount lens and a light meter that was in front of the prism just above the lens. I have no memory of what happened to it, however. I do remember getting a Pentax MX a few years later which was my first camera that I really used.

 

[Lee Shively]

A Mamiya/Sekor 500 DTL with 50mm f/2 lens.

 

[Dan Fromm]

Nikkormat FTN, bought new with 50/1.4 and 200/4. I got a 105/2.5 as soon as I'd accumulated the money.

Regrets? Just one. Perhaps I should have got a 55/3.5 MicroNikkor instead of the 50/1.4. After I got a 55/3.5 I hardly used the 50/1.4 for anything, eventually used it as a down payment on a 24/2.8. But until I got the MicroNikkor I got good use from the 50/1.4.

 

[Laurent]

A Canon AE1-Program. I was 14 and bought the body while my uncle (photographer also) offered me the 70-210 zoom. I still have the body but sold the zoom and some other lenses to help acquiring the EOS3 I'm now using.

Regrets ? I bought a cheap F1 a few years after that, but sold it a bit later. I'd LOVE to have a F1 again, simply for the metallic feel of it.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Some kind of Ricoh rangefinder, and then an A-1. Both were stolen in a house burglary, and I used the insurance to purchase a New F-1, which I still use over twenty years later.

 

[tbm]

A baby Rolleiflex which my father gave me on my 11th birthday. I wanted a Leica, with which he photographed me and my siblings at that time, but of course that was not to be.

 

[jjstafford]

First adjustable camera was Petri 7s which I still have.
Used to make this picture. Oxford, England.

 

[bobfowler]

My first 35 was a Practiflex (M40x1 mount) that was always breaking down, followed closely by a Kowa SET-R2.

 

[rbarker]

Although I "started" with an Ansco TLR (620?) in the '50s, my first 35mm camera was a little Yashica rangefinder with a fixed 50mm lens that I bought in the mid '60s. Great little camera, but it soon gave way to a Pentax SLR, which in turn gave way to a Nikon.

 

[Claire Senft]

that was enouch for a new M started with a Kodak 35mm Motomatic. Scale focussing, built in light meter and a spring motor. My interst in photography started when my first child was born. Not too long after that I made my worst photography purchase..Alpa 6c beautifully made, wonderful lens and not at all reliable Enough $ for a new Leica M3 and more than enough for a new Nikon F.

 

[lee]

Petri 35 in the mid 60's

lee\c

 

[Tom Duffy]

Through most of my formative child years, the family had pastel green plastic 120 or 620 camera that came free with a gas tank fill up. (Remember when gas stations would compete for your business by giving away free stuff?) We had the B&W pictures developed at the local stationery store in town. It took about a week to get the pictures back. The camera had a light leak so all the beach pictures came out with a big blotch at the bottom of the frame. My family saw nothing wrong with this for some reason, it was just the way the camera worked.

My first real camera was a fixed lens (50mm f2.8) Ricoh SLR with a big selenium cell on the front of the pentaprism. In retrospect, the build quality of the camera wasn't the greatest, but a picture I took of the Unisphere at the 1964/1965 World's Fair won second prize in a local photo contest. I still have some outstanding Kodachrome II slides taken with this camera. When Kodachrome 25 and 64 replaced it, I stopped using Kodachrome, since it was obvious that the new Kodachromes were a pale imitiation of Kodachrome II.
Feeling the limitations of a fixed, slow 50mm lens I bought a Minolta SRT101 with 58mm f 1.4 and a 200mm f3.5. When it developed shutter problems I bought a Leicaflex SL and never really escaped from the whole Leica mystique thing.

Take care,
Tom

 

[Shmoo]

Hmmmm, I was given a Ricoh 35mm 1/2 frame camera that gave me a lot of itty-bitty negatives...but my first (and only) 35mm camera is the Canon AE1 (first year, metal body) that I bought. Just had it CLA'd and it works great! Those older metal bodied Canons were wonderful. Still wish I had a Canon F1-N though...

 

[stark raving]

Pre-war Retina 1 (type 119) that belonged to my father. He picked it up used in Berlin during the occupation in 1946. He had a Weston Master II meter to go with it. I was 13, and he taught me how, and let me to start using it. We shot Kodachrome II, ASA 25, almost exclusively. The following year, 1970, I bought a new Pentax Spotmatic with 55/1.8 Super Takumar with my summer job earnings. I think it was around $250 at the time, I bought it from one of the New York City mail order houses that used to advertise in the back of the camera magazines. I remember Mom was totally opposed to me spending all my money, but she was wrong - it was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I still have it and use it, and except for the meter going non-linear, it works well.

Postscript- Dad never said as much, but I think he was a bit miffed his 14-year-old kid had a better camera than he! Later that summer, he bought a used Leica IIIc from Olden Camera in NY. The Retina was then effectively retired, but lingered around the family until 1996, when it was sold at a garage sale. Damn, that was just a few years before I became interested in cameras again, wish I still had it. I did inherit the Leica.

 

[eagleowl]

Canon EOS30-stolen when my house was burgled 3 years ago

 

[SuzanneR]

A Nikkormat my dad gave me in the late 70's. I still have it, but I haven't used it in awhile. I still have three nice lenses for it, too! The light meter is totally shot, but I would be fun to run some film through it... I haven't in years!