Your FIRST 35mm Camera...

[Vincent DiPietro]

The very first camera I ever got was purchased used from another GI overseas. It was a Canon QL something or other rangefinder. I knew nothing about photography so my sister ended up with it when I came home. Twenty years later my father passed away and I got his Contax RTS with a Zeiss 50 1.4 and a Zeiss 25 2.8. I fell in love with photography when I started to use this camera and now it has grown into a passion. Thanks Dad.

 

[Evgeny S]

My first 35mm was Smena-8m, a simple plastic (but fully manual, not PS) camera. Nice camera, which could produce good pictures.
And sometimes dad let me use his Zenit-E SLR.

 

[smudwhisk]

My first camera was a little Kodak 126. My first proper camera was a Praktica MTL5B, it lasted 10 years and then the light meter went. Still have it for posterity, along with a number of other Praktica's collected since - my favourite still being the BC1.

 

[kunihiko]

My first camera was Canon 2S2 which my father bought when he was a single. Though it wasn't an easy_to_use camera for a kid like I was, I knew nothing but the canon as a camera.
It still works good.

 

[Uncle Bill]

My first SLR was a 32nd birthday present in year 2000 from my mom and dad. It was a Canon Rebel XS with a 28-80 lens and an 80-210 Sigma. I should play with it more often.

Bill

 

[gnashings]

My first 35mm was Smena-8m, a simple plastic (but fully manual, not PS) camera. Nice camera, which could produce good pictures.
And sometimes dad let me use his Zenit-E SLR.

I had to laugh - kind of how it all started with me, using my dad's Zenit. Finally, he bought me a Lubitel when I was 11, and then I "borrowed" the Zenit so much that he just gave up on it I still have it - but I am repeating myself...sorry!

I wish I remembered what the little fixed focus, all plastic, East German thingy was that I had in Gr1... It was truly awful... but I felt it was pretty cool at the time!

 

[photobum]

My first camera was a Kodak Starmite II. Still have it. My first real camera was a Minolta P. Wish I still had it.

 

[big_ben_blue]

My very first camera as a kid was a little plastic thingy from East Germany, a 15Mark (about 2$ or less) Beirette I believe.
But my first real camera (the start of my interest in photography) was and still is a Minolta Maxxum7000 which I bought used.

 

[cao]

Argus C3. It was my dad's camera. He gave it to me. This was before the SLR revolution.

Hmmm... With me it was dad's old Argus C3, but this was well into the SLR revolution. After an all too long hiatus, my typical street cameras are Spotmatics from about the same time frame in which I learned to shoot with the C3.

 

[BrianShaw]

Nikon F-3 (1982 or 1983). Still use it as my primary 35mm.

 

[timd]

A Paxette Prontor-S rangefinder with a f/2.8 45mm lens, that had been my one of my dad's cameras from the mid-50s. Eventually I purloined his Zenit-E, a completely manual Russian brick of a thing that was clearly made in a tractor factory. Things got positively sophisticated when I subsequently graduated to an Olympus OM10 with the manual shutter adaptor and a 28-70 Miranda lens.

 

[ijsbeer]

My first 35mm SLR is a Pentax Spotmatic F with a 55mm f1:1.8 lens and a few other lenses. My dad used this back in the 70's and 80's so the memory's with that camera are very strong. I still use it sometimes when I feel the need to slow down.

 

[Yukona]

My very first 35mm camera was a Canon A-1 body with a Canon FD 35-105mm f/3.5 zoom lens. It had a Canon A, autowinder attached to the body. I loved this camera and wish I still owned it.

 

[CraigH]

Mine was an Olympus 35EC in black. I still have it but don't use it. About a year later my dad got a Minolta SRT-101 that I still use alot. Just had a CLA, good for another 30 years.

Craig

 

[braxus]

My first 35mm was a Canon T-70. I sold it a year later and got the T-90. My T-90 several years ago went bust, and after repairs it went bust again- so I sold it for parts at a loss. Now I have the chance to buy back the same T-70 camera I sold. The buyer has kept it all these years.

 

[wilhelm]

My first was a Petri rangefinder of some sort, actually my dad's camera. Don't remember much about it. That was in the fall of 1987. The first one I ever bought was a Canon F1n. That thing is a tank; I still have it, and use it on the rare occasion I shoot 35.

 

[wclavey]

A Practika Nova 1B that I bought for $100 and used until it fell apart, which, surprisingly, was a few years. I was in high school, so it must have been around 1969 or 1970. Prior to that it had been a 120 folder (Spartus #4) and a folder I cannot remember the name of that took 828.

 

[eli griggs]

A Petri Color 35E. I was in high school and worked summer and part-time at the original Belk department store, in Charlotte, NC, USA. Belk had one in what passed for the photo department and as I recall, I paid $54 in 1974-5. I used that camera to do street photography during lunch hours and after work and for the life of me, I can't member what happened to it. I loved that little camera; it took a lot of great b&w shots. Latter on I settled on Canon slrs and a Leica M3 for 35mm work.

 

[ernestojl]

Mine was a Voigtländer Vitomatic IIb my dad bought during our first and only family trip to Europe, back in 1966. The next 35mm camera was a Miranda Sensomat RE I received in 1970 as a gift when I got my Electronics Technician degree. While the Vitomatic was stolen in 1981, I still keep the Miranda in good shape after all those years.

 

[silverliner]

I cannot clearly recalled but I guess it was a Minolta Hi-Matic E. My dad bought me that camera back in 1970s. I hate that camera.

 

[Wimpler]

I too have a miranda sensomat RE, great camera! Mine came with a 50mm f1.4 lens, which is pretty nice! My first was a pentax p30t. Still use it a lot. Mostly with an adapter to use screwmount lenses instead of K-mount lenses.

 

[battra92]

My first camera was a Kodak 110. I don't remember the exact model or anything but I had lots of fun with it. I still have one photo that I took when in the 7th grade (ca. 1995) of a local waterfall while on a school hiking trip. It was a fun camera to say the least.

My first 35mm Camera was a point and shoot Olympus I was given as a birthday present when I was around 13 or 14. I loved that camera to bits because, like another poster mentioned, it was mine. I took that camera everywhere with me including school trips, family outings, etc. etc.

That camera lasted me a good many years when in college I bought a digital P&S *gasp* which I used everywhere as well. After "upgrading" that to a higher 5MP model and nearly going broke at the same time, I still found that I wasn't quite getting everything I wanted. Then I joined the photography club in college where they taught me darkroom work and the allure of "free" film and processing appealed to me somehow so I decided to take the plunge and after some research I bought the Nikon N75 and for all intents and purposes, I love that camera. The only thing I could use is a manual ISO setting but other than that, it does what I want.

Of course after getting that one I was looking for more user cameras and somehow ended up a collector. ^_^;;

I still don't know that my work is any good, even though there are people who are suggesting I start selling my prints but at least I have fun.

 

[jeroldharter]

Yashica FX-3 with 50mm f/1.7 Yashica lens

 

[copake_ham]

Nikon Nikkormat FT-2 with 50mm/2.8 Nikkor lens

 

[Kino]

Minolta SRT-MC II : basically a SRT 100 without ANY information in the viewfinder except a match needle exposure system. I was 13 and actually talked my parents BANK in to loaning me the $400 to buy the camera, several lenses, a bag and tripod. Had to work all Summer pouring concrete to pay it off, but I have been hooked solid ever since. Had the very camera up until about 5 years ago when a co-worker (who claimed to have once worked in a repair shop -expert he was) took it apart to reposition a shim in the pentaprism that had slipped into the meter needle path and destroyed it. He brought it back to me in a box and said, "Here, I couldn't do anything with it" and walked away. I peed in his coffee for several years after that until he took a job elsewhere... ;-)