As best I can recall, my first camera was a Kodak Instamatic. I used to dribble a little gasoline from the lawnmower onto my parents' asphault driveway and set it on fire. When it went out I'd set my Apollo Lunar Lander and figures up around it and take pictures. To me, it looked a lot like those fuzzy, over-exposed photos from the Moon! Parents put an end to that but I still have one of those pictures around somewhere (I hope!)
First real camera was a Minolta SRT-101 with the 58mm f/1.4 lens. The outfit was new in the box at an estate auction, bought on a whim when I was 35 or so years old. Read the manual which came with it and finally understood F stops and shutter speeds and their relationship with each other and with light. Never had gotten it before, consequently had avoided cameras since childhood. Would probably have saved a lot of money had Minolta not written so clearly and now blame them for everything since. At least, that's what I tell my wife.
First medium format: Kowa 66 with 80mm lens, well used from a camera show. Wow, what a big negative can do!
First large format: Ansco 5x7 wooden tailboard camera, from Jim at Midwest Photo. Included a 6 1/2" Ilex Paragon lens in Ilex shutter. Of all the cameras and lenses I've since sold, I think I miss this one the most. Thanks, Jim, for searching through the back room to find something that met my (ridiculously low) budget at the time: I fell in love with large format the day the camera came in the mail and I set it up in the living room and looked at the ground glass for the first time. Had I come across an inexpensive 5x7 enlarger instead of the 4x5 one I bought, I probably would never have gone on to 4x5 and 8x10, staying with 5x7. In fact, if I found a good modern 5x7 enlarger I could afford, I'd probably go back to that format and sell off the 4x5 stuff. A 4x5 negative is sort of on the small side...
Mike
, my big mistake). Shooting happily with an RZ II now though
