Your FIRST 35mm Camera...

[agphotography]

My very first SLR I ever used was my Dad's Pentax MX. I worked with that camera for a few years as I learned my way around the darkroom around 15 years or so ago. I have improved dramatically since those early days but it was still so much fun to learn. I used the camera again a few years ago when I wanted to start coming back to shooting film for personal work, and it was just like I remembered. I had picked up an ME Super for cheap as well so my younger sisters could learn about shooting film, and I was quite dismayed to learn that one of them had dropped the MX enough times that it was broken. I'd almost want to send it out for repair just for sentimental value.

 

[PaperNoire]

Like many, I naturally stumbled across a Trip 35, still own it.

 

[Black Dog]

M for making

My very first SLR I ever used was my Dad's Pentax MX. I worked with that camera for a few years as I learned my way around the darkroom around 15 years or so ago. I have improved dramatically since those early days but it was still so much fun to learn. I used the camera again a few years ago when I wanted to start coming back to shooting film for personal work, and it was just like I remembered. I had picked up an ME Super for cheap as well so my younger sisters could learn about shooting film, and I was quite dismayed to learn that one of them had dropped the MX enough times that it was broken. I'd almost want to send it out for repair just for sentimental value.

That reminds me, I need to keep my eyes open for a couple of those!

 

[eyesage]

Mine was a Nikon N2000 my photographer parents got me one Christmas. It was to remedy the awkward situation caused the year before when the FE they got my sister didn't seem particularly appreciated by her though it obviously had me no end of jealous. Since I wan't keen on what I then saw as the horrible limitations of the normal lens it came with (now is a different story), and my parents owned the camera store, we went that day so I could 'upgrade' that sweet prime Nikkor to one of those Vivitar all-in-one zoom jobbies that were a new thing at the time. Well, we live and learn don't we.

I can't say the combination didn't serve me well. The lens was probably half a dozen shades of rubbish but it was better than I was at the time so who's to be the wiser now. That all eventually got traded and upgraded and by my young and single days I had what I realize was a near ideal setup with an F2, an FM2 and a Mamiya C330 on the medium format end. I should have just stopped there but allowed myself to be seduced first by slick black plastic covered autofocus bodies with their wiz-bang LCD screens where all the dials should be, then to digital with the Mamiya getting sold somewhere along the way.

It was only about a year ago that I finally gave my head a good shake and realized it was just no fun anymore. I dusted off the old tanks and reels and got myself a veteran RB67 system. To my delight I found the (by my estimate) 18 year old HC-110 is still as good as ever. I recently re-acquired an F2 and am in the process of preparing several wiz-bang plastic covered cameras for online auction. I can't remember what ever happened to my sister's old FE though, but interestingly here it is some 30 years on and this past weekend I bought one just like it.

-Joe

 

[marciofs]

Nikon F3 HP

 

[riverie]

pentax k1000...which also introduce me into film photography. I sold a lot of my slr camera, but I will keep my k1000 as a memory.

 

[ckeithmartin]

pentax spotmatic in 1968. Long gone but I just bought a "new" rollie 35S

 

[Roger Cole]

That reminds me, I need to keep my eyes open for a couple of those!

The MX is a joy to use. I think I like shooting with mine more than I do with my LX. If it's not too small for you (and it isn't for me, in spite of large-ish hands) it's just a superb example of a well built, well designed all manual camera. I wish it had a "no trick needed" mirror lockup and that the meter went higher than EI 1600 but those quibbles are my only complaints.

 

[Mike F]

Nikkormat Ftn with 50 mm f 2 and 24 mm f 2.8. Great camera that I used while a photog for the Daily Illini, the student paper at U of Illinois. Damn thing would not break, no matter the abuse I heaped upon it.

 

[BobClack]

Minolta SRT-201 recently given new life by John Titterington. (Plug intended!)

 

[Someonenameddavid]

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.

That would be a Cambron, distinguished from a Zenit-E by having a piece of plastic with the word "Cambron" glued over the Zenit-E name

 

[Uncle Brian]

Canon Ftb the first one not the Ftbn, a great camera with a nice 50 f1.8. I had a lot of fun with that camera. In recent years I have purchased another (actually 3 until I got a perfect one) but somehow the magic was gone.

 

[DCB12]

Chinon CE5


Peace

 

[MattPharmD]

As a kid my first cameras were either disposable things or this really late model kodak instamatic 110. The first time I owned a 35mm camera, it was a Canon Rebel 2000. I bought it as a kit with a cheap Sigma 28-80 and a 70-300. Obviously I came in very late in the film era, but that camera really sparked my interest in photography. So much so that I still have that camera and those lenses today. I don't know if it is just that I can't bring myself to sell them or if I haven't been able justify replacing the 70-300, but I still manage to find a use for both.

My film Rebel still finds a place in my bag most days, at least until I find a fun 35mm Rangefinder to take its spot.

 

[1L6E6VHF]

Yashica Lynx 14E

A neighbor had it, the shutter failed, and he chose to replace with with a new Minolta SRT-101, and gave me the broken Lynx. I was 10 years old. My parents paid $33 to have the shutter fixed.

I shot about 10 rolls in it - no two the same emulsion, as trying different films was, to me, part of the fun. Many of my pictures were shaken, poorly composed, or just uninteresting. Had far too many pictures where the subject was too far away from the camera to be prominent in the picture.

Then I went to take a picture of the twilight over a small lake. I was using a little telescope tripod for the time exposure. One bolt came out of the tripod, sending the unusual fixed-lens camera with an f1.4 lens into a wet death in Little Platte Lake.

I had much more success with a Ricoh 500G I bought 7 years later, shot about 50 rolls on it, still have it, still works.

I still get a gleam in my eye whenever I see a fast-lensed Japanese rangefinder camera of the era (Many Yashica models, Konica Auto-S, Minolta Hi-Matic 7, etc). They all have one thing in common - the shutters NEVER work!

 

[ZenziFriend]

first used. Contaflex Rapid ( my father used it for 25 years, still working, but needs CLA)
first owned: Canon A-1 w. 1.4/50 New bought 1988 (Camera built in 1985), still have it, works, no asthma. Not used anymore because of F1/ F1n/T90

 

[OptiKen]

A Nikon EM that I ended up building up with assorted lenses, filters, motor drive, flashes, etc.
It was fun to learn on and produced some wonderful pics of my children growing up until I became tired of living my life watching through a viewfinder.
Now, with children grown and gone, I have gone back to film and a slower way of doing and appreciating things. About a month ago, I picked up an old Nikon EM for sentimental reasons although I rarely ever shoot 35mm. I've been thinking of using it as an IR camera. With IR, the fewer controls and 'automatics' I have to contend with the better. I have been using an Argus A2B with a fixed focus but the glass on the Nikon would be better.

 

[HowardDvorin]

I graduated college in 1962. I took some of my gift money and bought a used Graphic 35 with an f3.5 lens. It had a rapid advance lever that I thought would make me into a sports photographer

I used it for a few years.

Unforunatel, My younger brother managed to lose it!.

 

[klop]

I think it was a "Vivitar" I had gotten from Ritz in the late 80's. Horrible camera, like my 1st wife at the time, wouldn't work right, cheap, took a horrible picture, worthless, always disappointed with it, while on vacation, usually wished I'd left it home.....

 

[zanxion72]

Mine could be considered a toy camera (o.k. having had a variable aperture it made it a "prosumer" to camera ). Yet it has been enough to sparkle photography in me:

 

[Michael L.]

What a delightful thread! Thanks for the welcome opportunity to look back at the equipment that launched me on my journey into photography.

Actually I didn't start out with 35mm. I shot my very first pictures way back in the late 1960s with an honourable Kodak Junior Six-20. It had been sitting, in absolutely pristine condition, at a junk shop, and I picked it up for literally next to nothing, intending to use it for study decor only; I wasn't interested in photography - yet. But the pretty little thing with its chrome fittings might as well have had a label with the words TRY ME around its lens like the potion Alice discovered down the rabbit hole, for I soon found myself running films through the camera and actually enjoying it. I was smitten, and I never found an antidote.

The range of 620 films being limited, I soon felt the need for a 35mm camera, and on my student budget I could just afford a pre-war Kodak Retina with a fabulously sharp 50 mm f/3.5 Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar lens and a compur shutter. No rangefinder, of course, so I learned a lot about judging distances and DOF, and it was a real joy to shoot with this handy little camera.

BTW, both Kodaks continue to give good service today.

The next and definitive step forward, cementing my addiction, was an SLR - a classic Contaflex I from 1953, bought second-hand and newly CLA'd in 1976. Fully mechanical and built like a tank, it served me very well for about 20 years, and I have yet to find a prime lens to match the sharply defined DOF of its glorious Tessar. I loved that camera and was extremely sad to retire it when the shutter finally became unreliable; an expert CLA might have extended its lease of life, but few repair shops would tackle a synchro-compur shutter by then, and with growing children to feed I really couldn't justify the quite considerable expense.

Its successor as my general purpose camera was an Olympus OM10 which after 25 years of continuous use still obstinately refuses to fall apart or develop other ills, happily oblivious of what its many detractors say about it (see (there was a url link here which no longer exists)). And as luck would have it, I just bought a Contaflex Super B in mint condition for $10 at a jumble sale, so I shan't want for a fully mechanical SLR. Automatics are allright, but on revient toujours a son premier amour.

Regards,
Michael

 

[Charles Wass]

In 1972 I bought my first 35mm, the Canon F1, after reading the very comprehensive review by Geoffrey Crawley in the BJP.

 

[ronwhit]

first 35mm

My first 35mm camera was a Minolta Hi Matic 7S. (sp?) That camera taught me a lot about "equivalent exposure". It was simple and rugged - I wish I still had it. Next came a Canon Ftb in August, 1973. I still have that camera. It has had a CLA twice since I bought it, and I still use it.

 

[F4user]

Zenit TTL.
After few month from purchase the shutter broken after body exposed to direct sunlight ( black get very hot ) . Dissasemble it and replace shutter's all exterior fabric riband with ones made of plastic.
Still have in full working condition with a Soligor 28-135 ( was Olympus mount ; removed and replaced with 42mm custom made. I worked as an service engineer for CNC machines )

 

[naaldvoerder]

Minolta Xg-1. My father had X700, with a collection of primes, so I was able to use his lenses..