Your FIRST 35mm Camera...

[DWThomas]

Hmm - seem to have missed previous resurrections of this thread! Sometime in the week or two after Christmas 1957 I combined my gift money with some savings and upgraded from my Brownie Target Six-20 to an Argus C-3, a shiny new 35mm rangefinder. I still have it; after 20 or 30 years unused, I hauled it out for Argus Day in 2006 and put it to work. I've since done a CLA, a rangefinder calibration, and this year an overhaul of the aperture mechanics in the 50mm Coated Cintar. It still takes a pretty decent picture.

This year I did Argus Day (Argust 14th) with the C-3 and some Panatomic-X dated 1988 -- it doesn't get much better!

 

[Murray Kelly]

In 1953 my parents sprung for a Retina IA to replace the Kodak Vigilant I was still in last year at high school and it must really have hurt the budget. No comment please - I took some of my best pictures then, with that camera. From there to a Contaflex and a Yashica Pentamatic at University. Down hill from there? :-O

 

[Manwithacam]

My first 35mm camera was a borrowed Zenit B, when I was in my early teens. I bought a Praktica BX20 kit at 18 and loved having TTL metering as opposed to having to use a hand held meter with the Zenit. I still have my BX20 kit and 22 other SLRs. The most recent being a Minolta SRT-101 a week ago.

I too got a Ricoh 500G, just last month, I'm still on my first film with it. I also bought a couple of Yashicas, one good, a Minister D, one bad, a J. I have a dodgy Konica Auto S2.

I only got back into 35mm photography in February this year. I reloaded my BX20 and forgot to set the speed to B to switch off the meter first. When I went to take a photo the meter wouldn't work. The contacts in my 50mm lens had been damaged. My 70-210mm was fine so the mount was ok.

This got me checking ebay for a replacement, where I discovered Canon EOS 650 and 5000 bodies for 99p each plus postage. An EOS RT with a Canon 35-105mm lens was 19GBP. Within a week I had the start of a new system, one which I could never have afforded back then.

Between then and now I have bought 14 SLRs, 4 rangefinders several lenses and several compacts from ebay, charity shops, flea markets, boot sales and cash converter type shops.

 

[MontanaJay]

After I graduated from by 127 Brownie midget, I used my dad's Argus C4, which actually was a very good camera. I was about 13 at the time, which was 1966.
He got me an Exacta IIa when he wanted his camera back, and I was off to the races, quickly to Nikon F.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

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.

my first 35mm was a dreadfulEast-German PentaxI bought in 1971. Itdidn'last much longer than a week before the shutter froze and I switched to a Nikon FM,which is still working finetoday.

 

[zehner21]

My first camera was a Canon T-90. Bought by my father for himself, he never used it too much... So I began familiarising with it since I was 6, but never understood how it worked until I was 16 (rediscovered analog photography after years of digital P&S)

 

[Jim Noel]

My first 35mm camera was a brand new Kodak 35, f 3.5, no rangefinder. It was so long ago I have forgotten the other details.

 

[Ricardo Miranda]

my first 35mm was a dreadfulEast-German PentaxI bought in 1971. Itdidn'last much longer than a week before the shutter froze and I switched to a Nikon FM,which is still working finetoday.

Never heard before of an East-German Pentax. And it must have been a long time between the one in 71 and the Nikon: the FM only came out in 77.

 

[FilmNeverDie]

Olympus , cant remember the model

 

[anfenglin]

An old chinese Seagull DF-102b, a blatant copy of I think the Minolta SR-7, same mount but no metering and a quite suprising lens, a Haiou 64 58mm f2. I paid 300 Yuan for it, that would be around 30something Euros. Not sure if it was too much. I shot five films with it in my semester in Beijing in 2011 and it got me to like manual wind-up cameras with a bit of a heft to them. I also have big hands, so I feel more comfortable with a bigger camera.

 

[OptiKen]

My 'first' 35mm camera was probably a disposable.
The first 35mm that I remember, however, was a Nikon EM.
I recently picked up a used one for use with IR (and sentimental reasons. )

 

[gzhuang]

Nikon F601. Travelled down under. A relic now.

 

[railwayman3]

My first was an Exa 500 slr, complete with shutter problems from new, like so many later Exa/Exaktas ! Changed it for a Rollei 35, a more lightly built camera than the Exa, but which proved 100% reliable. A West German Planar lens, compared with the East German Tessar lens on the Exa.

 

[Cropline]

My first 35mm was some series of fiim Canon Rebel followed a couple years later by an EOS A2. Still have and use the A2.

 

[macfred]

My first 35mm was a Nikon FM in 1978 - I still have it today. No problems at all.

 

[bergytone]

my first 35mm was a Minolta SRT101 bought in 1977 i think. Sold it on that big auction site a few years ago. It was pretty warn out and the shutter curtain was failing. Now i've got a Nikon FM.

 

[outwest]

Graflex Stereo Graphic. 1962.

 

[Arklatexian]

Are you sure that wasn't the Korean War (I mean "Police Action")? I don't remember us ever hearing of, much less seeing any Nikon cameras before the 1950s when GIs started buying them in Japan on their way home from Korea. They also introduced us to Canon........Regards

 

[DcAnalogue]

The first "serious" 35 mm camera (apart from Kodak Instamatic) I can remember in my house was a Kodak Retinette Ia (Early 60's)...... I still own it but the shutter needs a CLA......

 

[Arklatexian]

My first 35mm was an Agfa folding camera (yes, a folder), no range finder but a good lens and shutter. I shot Kodachrome ASA10 in it. The sunny "16" setting was 1/50 @ between f5.6 and f8. I don't remember its name or any of that. I bought it strictly for color slides as I already had MF cameras and was already developing and printing B&W.....Regards

 

[McCoy]

Mine was a Vivitar XV-1. I shot it until I wore it out (I still have it). I just bought a used one last year for old time sake. I moved on to Pentax K1000 then Pentax ME-Super (loved that one and shot a couple of thousand portraits with it). Then moved on to Nikon FM2, it's built like a tank and is bullet proof (ha). Got it from a press photographer. That camera has been through a lot.
-McCoy

 

[Chris Lange]

Technically it was a Nikkormat FT2 in October 2008, but while it was in transit to me I bought a used F3/MD4 from EP Kamera in Helsinki.

 

[Jeff Bradford]

The first real camera I owned was a Pentax K1000. Before that, I used Dad's Canonet QL17 or Mom's Kodak 126 roll-film camera.

 

[jfoote]

Nikon FM. Just got it back from freezing up after all these years. Got the classic 105 f/2.5 and am going for a shoot tomorrow!

 

[johnnyh]

Halina 35X in the mid-'60s.