Your FIRST 35mm Camera...

Good Morning,

My first adjustable camera was a Richoflex TLR which I used through several years of high school yearbook work back in the 1950's. My first SLR was a Miranda Fv bought new in the mid-1960's.

Konical

My first 35mm was my mom's Canon AE-1. I still use it today, but I've also acquired a Canon F-1. My first lenses were a 50/2.8 and an 80-200 (or is it a 75-200?). Now I have lenses from 28mm-400mm for those bodies. They both work really well still.
-Grant

The first 35mm camera that I used was my father's Zeiss Contessa. I still use it. It has a maginificent 45mm Tessar lens and it folds up into a very small (although surprisingly heavy) package. It's far from user-friendly by standards these days, but my use of this camera was the reason I knew how to use LF lenses in shutters without ever reading a word on the subject. The Zeiss lens is mounted in a Synchro-Compur shutter that' still spot-on after all of these years. (I did once have to exercise it for a little while after the camera had not been used for about five years, but the speeds came back perfectly.) The meter has been innacurate for longer than I've been alive, but that's a problem that seems to afflict all of these old selenium meters.

The first 35mm camera that I purchased was a Nikon FE2. It's still my main 35mm camera. It has never been in to the shop for work as it's never needed it, and hopefully never will.

I'm glad so many of you shared your stories - I think those first cameras have so much mystique, when you look at them through the eyes of the often very young person who held them in awe all those years ago! I remember thinking that the Zenit was something akin to a sextant, with its light meter and little exposure calculator - so crude now, but back then I remember feeling like I was in on some big secret when my dad showed me how to work the whole contraption! Not to mention, I looked at the first picture of me with that camera, and it looks like a Pentax 6x7 compared to my then little self! To me its magic, I think some of you must have felt the same way to be here talking about it after all these years! Thanks for your memories!

Unless you count an Instamatic (126 film is sort of 35mm) I was another Zenit EM starter, although I used an old Ensign 120 TLR of my mother's before I got that. The Zenit was replaced by an OM2n which I still use constantly. Interestingly, shortly after I got the OM I was fool enough to leave both it and the Zenit on view in the car for a few minutes. Someone broke a window and stole the Zenit but left the OM2. This was about 1980 when an OM2n was state of the art. There's no pleasing some people .

I am surprised to see only one OM10 starter. With the optional manual adaptor they were (still are) great starter cameras. I have two and have lost count of the ones I have checked over to be bought by my students over the years.

David.

1968 - a Nikon F with a Photomic FTN head. Split image viewfinder.

Damn, it was a beauty and took absolutely wonderful pics. Had a 50mm Nikkor lens (1.4).

Got my first camera when I was 12 which was a Zenith-EM with a 50mm lens. No frills on this one but it did the job. Simple is efficient

I shared a Minolta SRT 101 with a few friends around 74. Then I bought a Canon FTB New in 75.

I got a Konica plastic camera when I was a kid and didn't really get anything better until I loaned my father's Spotmatic...but that was only after having entered the world of photography with a digicam

Gary Grenell said:

1968 - a Nikon F with a Photomic FTN head. Split image viewfinder.

Damn, it was a beauty and took absolutely wonderful pics. Had a 50mm Nikkor lens (1.4).

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I couldn't hope to afford an 'F' in '68 but I finally fulfilled my dream of owning one in '02 in beautiful shape and with a working Photomic finder.
I keep it loaded wth Tri X (Naturally) and like to grab it as I walk out the door. It is always fun to point it out to friends in movies featuring war correspondents, photo journalists and fashion photographers.

My first 35mm was a used Exacta VX1000 made in "Soviet Occupied Germany"

Yashica TL Electro X, it took me forever to save enough money to buy that camera. You know young family and all the demands that come with that sort of thing. Wish I still had it, it was a real pleasure to use other then the screw mount lens. Today I seldom use a 35MM other then and emergency camera when, I haven't got a medium format or large with me.

Neal

I still have an F w/FTN and f36 motor drive. It's hard to believe they got much better than that . Although a hinged back might be nice.

Mike

first 35 mm camera

my first 35mm was a Finnetta 88 bought in 1952 during my National Service, i used it to record all my NS activities ( not including the naughty bits) I have had many others since then.

Did nobody have a Praktica MTL? I did, or rather I borrowed my Dad's. He didn't mind as he liked to use his Canonet, or XA2.

I thought it was so sleek and well built compared to the Zenith.

Zeiss Ikon Contessamat SE, that my dad allowed me to use after I got bored of my Instamatic.
soon afterwards I was allowed to use his Spotmatic (whhich I still have)

mikebarger said:

Although a hinged back might be nice.

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Yeah, that was a feature that really caught on, once it was introduced. It must have been a pretty good idea

Praktica LTL3

Halina Paulette bought with incentive points in my first job after graduating. Then upgraded to a Praktica Super TL2.

I envy all you people who borrowed your father's camera. My dad used to borrow my Brownie, given to me by an aunt one Christmas, which he preferred to his 1925 Kodak folder.

My first 35mm was a Konica C35V, a compact, fixed lens, scale focus camera. It had a really good 38mm f2.8 lens. I used that as I took lessons from a tutor in London, Ontario (David Hallam, a wonderful photographer and person... does anyone know where he is now?) and then, due to David's experience and and influence, an OM-1 w/ 50mm f1.8 F.Zuiko, the first iteration of the Zuiko 50. David had an M3 and had had a Rolleiflex 35SL, which he found very unreliable. When he related that the Oly/Zuiko system was as satisfying for him as his M3 and Leica lenses, that's what I ordered.

Side story: One summer, I met, through the church I was attending, a young woman who was a missionary nurse in Central America who was on leave for the summer and staying with some of my friends in London. She wanted to buy a decent 35mm camera (this was the middle 70s,), so I took her to Linden Photo to survey what was available. I remember being so stricken with her in the shop, and FINALLY I took her hand as we discussed her options. We sorta fell in love (or at least infatuation!) and I remember later that summer talking with her and she told me that she had been wanting me to "make a move", so when I took her hand in Linden Photo, it was a special moment for her. And for me too!

I'm not sure what happened to that C35V, but a couple of years ago I bought a C35 (rangefinder version) on that awful auction place. It brings back a lot of memories (including Lillian,) produces great images (I love the colour rendition,) and is one of my two non-Oly rangefinders. The other is a Minolta 7s. I have lots of OMs and Zuikos now.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Earl

Zenit was my first 35mm, shot quit happily for 4 years with that in combinaation with a variety of really cheap russian made lenses, made some great shots actually.... this was some 30- 35 years ago ...

I invested in a Nikkormat which I still use on a daily basis, it's tattered, it's worn, it has dents .. but it's like an extension of my body, I know how it functions ... It's had 2 cla's, one with shutter replacement after sticking my finger through it, It still makes marvellous pictures.

Mine was a Minolta XP I think, it wasn't all that long ago, maybe 13 years ago, but it set me on this path.

Funny thing is I never really took photography seriously until 2002. I tried many times before, but though I was fascinated by photographs, particularly b&w ones, I never really got bitten that badly by the bug.
Another thing was money. Boy were cameras, lenses, film and processing expensive when I was a boy. And in fact very much still were till the end of the 90's in the UK.
I think also becoming politically motivated helped a great deal. I now knew what I wanted to take pictures of, and I enjoyed it. In turn what I have learned from that ongoing experience has helped me enjoy shooting scenery, town's, family occasions, whatever. Also dare I say it, d*****l has helped, I can get my pictures to others cheaply and fairly easily with the use of a flatbed or film scanner. I'm also realising that with limited time for taking and working on pictures, along with politically motivated work often requiring a fairly high volume, I'm going to have do d*****l capture. Hopefully though that will mean that instead of growling for hours in front of the film scanner working on pictures I need, but am not that excited about, I can find more time for working on the special stuff on b&w film.

What I have never forgotten though is the basics I learned shooting colour neg and slide film with the MTL aged about 12. I'm also looking forward to getting back to basics with my Dad's old Canonet that I got him to dig out the other week. I thought the MTL was so much better when I was a kid, what did I know.

So what's turned me from being an occasional snapper to an addicted enthusiast complete with dodgy press passes and business cards? Finding motivation, a reason if you like, plummeting exipment and consumable costs (not that it's exactly cheap, just I can do it now) and technology (I won't say that word again).

gnashings said:

... Lets see what all you folks cut your teeth on - what was your first 35mm camera! ...

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Not all of us "cut our teeth" with 35mm. I guess you could say I went through photography "adolescence" with that format.

It was a Zeiss Ikonette borrowed from my ex brother-in-law. Crude to operate, but a Zeiss lens! When I later bought a Sears (Ricoh) SLR, I thought I'd died and gone to camera heaven ...

That was a few SLR's ago :rolleyes:

Cheers y'all.

My first camera used 127 - it was a Brownie, and it had a built in flashbulb holder. I got it for my 8th birthday. I then got an old 616 folder when I was about 11, when my Dad and I set up my first darkroom together - initially just doing contact prints. Later my Dad gave me my first 35mm camera - a Kodak 35 rangefinder that the technicians at my Dad's workplace (the Kodak processing laboratory in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) had repaired. It eventually died.

I also used my dad's Bantam camera (828 is close, isn't it) and then the Canon Ftb he bought in the early to mid 70s (the first camera he ever owned that had not been manufactured by Kodak).

The first new 35mm camera I bought was a Kodak Retina S1 - what I now realize to be a sad reminder of a once great camera line, with a mediocre lens, but still functional.

Does anyone else here have memories of using a 35mm camera that took flashcubes? (thankfully, it also had a hotshoe for electronic flash).

Eventually I purchased an Olympus OM1 (not MD) in 1974. Several years later it was traded in on an OM2s which I still have, along with way too many other OM system bodies.

With respect to the OMs as starter cameras, I am partial to the OMG/OM20 - I have two such bodies - great as backups or to leave in the cars so as to make sure I am never far from a camera.

A Nikon FG.