What was your first camera?

[Clawed]

What was your first camera and how old were you when you got it?
What was the first camera that you bought yourself?

Well, my first camera was also the first one I bought for myself, as I have never received one as a gift. I do not remember the exact model, but it was a Kodak Advantix Camera I purchased in 2001 (I was probably 20 at that time). Thus, Advanced Photo System film is all the film I have ever used. Not a bad little camera at all!

 

[MikeBcos]

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie at age 8, I used that for a couple of years then graduated to a Kodak Instamatic 126. I used that for 6 years then I got a point-n-shoot of some kind for my 16th birthday. I soon traded that for my first SLR, a Russian Zenit - I wish I still had that camera!

That was swapped on my 18th birthday for a Konica FT-1 and a Konica TC package, I still have the TC and still run the odd roll of film through it.

 

[smyth]

Well, my absolute first camera was a Crayola camera (see below) lol when I was 6 or 7.

Then I got more interested in photography when I was beginning high school, and used my parents' Yashica FRII

Then a few years ago I bought my first Digital P&S my Coolpix 5900, and then last year I got my D40.

 

[dmatsui]

I started off with a Kodak DC3200 lets say about 10 years ago

Then moved to a nikon coolpix l3, perhaps 5 years ago

and about a year and a half ago i got a nikon d80. After i get my dads Olympus OM4-T repaired i'll be experimenting with film aswell.

 

[Phranquey]

First camera I used was a borrowed Canon AE-1P

First camera I was given was a Minolta X-700

First camera I purchased for myself was a Nikon F3

 

[Plankton]

Pentax K1000.

 

[error99]

my first camera was olympus om-1, then i bought for myself canon 350D

 

[Josh66]

I can't remember what it was. It was a 110 P&S hand-me-down though.

The oldest one I still have is a Canon Elph 2 APS camera. I loved how small it is.

 

[IgsEMT]

Coolpix 5400

 

[UUilliam]

My first camera...No idea, most likely a disposable
First camera I paid for - Pentax Optio E-30
First REAL camera - Canon EOS 450D

 

[Actor]

The first camera that I was "allowed to use" was the family camera. It may have been a brownie. It was a simple box camera with a fixed lens and shutter speed. The WLF was a small piece of ground glass on the top. It used 620 film which you advanced with a knob on the side. There was a small red filter on the back which allowed you to read the exposure number that was printed on the paper backing of the film. The pictures were rectangular, not square. I think my mother still has it. I recall taking a lot of pictures with it when I was 13 or 14.

The first camera I had that was exclusively mine was a Kodak box camera. It had a flash molded into the body that used bulbs. It used roll film, either 620, 120 or 127, I can't remember. The pictures were square. It had eye level viewing and, like the family camera, you advanced the film with a knob and looked through a red window to see the frame number. I was 16 or 17 when I got it. I had it in high school, college and through the army. When I got to college I began splurging and buying color film. I would show my mother the B&W pictures I took but not the color pictures. I didn't want her to know I was being extravagant and buying color film. I don't know what became of this camera.

I had one other camera given to me by my brother, which he bought in Japan on his way home from Viet Nam. It was a 35mm Olympus that took half frame exposures, up to 72 frames on a normally 36 frame cartridge. You focused by the numbers on the focusing ring. I was my first camera with a built in meter.

The first camera I bought for myself (actually my wife and I bought it for ourselves) was an SLR that used instamatic cartridges. It had a leaf shutter in a screw mount lens. We only had it for a short time. It and the Olympus were stolen by burglars. We're pretty sure the burglars were kids because the only other things taken were a half-gallon can of tomatoes, a quart of ice cream and an uncut chocolate cake.

The replacement for the stolen cameras was a rangefinder which we bought from Sears. (See the "Nostalgia" thread.) It appears to have been a Ricoh 500G with a Sears logo. I must have been about 27 or 28. Wonderful camera. Split image focusing and center-the-needle exposure adjustment. I don't know whatever happened to it. Yesterday I was looking at some slides taken in Great Smokie Mountains National Park and I'm certain they were taken with that camera. That trip was in 1985 so I must have still had it then. I suspect it disappeared when we moved in 1987.

From 1987 to 1994 the only cameras I owned were a series of instamatics that are not particularly memorable. Just before Christmas 1994 my wife asked me the usual "what do you want for Christmas" and I gave her my usual list. Then she asked "if you could have something really nice what would you want?" My immediate answer was an SLR. I had something like a Pentax K-1000 in mind. What I got was a PZ-20. The entire family pooled their money and got it for me.

 

[YellowBay]

Olympus OM-10. With motor wind!

 

[Laika]

The first camera I used was my dad's Pentax K1000. A camera that I couldn't really appreciate at the time (I was 10). I still have it, but I haven't used it in ages.

The first camera I bought for myself was a Vivitar Vivicam with 2.0 mexapixels. Not a good camera, but all it really needed to do was survive the rough treatment I put it through.

 

[Pugs]

Hm...

First camera was a Kodak Instamatic 104, I was seven-ish.

When the Instamatic broke/was lost/was stolen by a sibling/disappeared into the black hole that children lose stuff into, I graduated to a Kodak Ektralite 10... I was seriously hot sh!t with that bad boy!

Following the Ektralite's demise (again, that blackhole of childhood), I was camera-less until sometime as a teen, my Big Brother from the Big Brother/Big Sister Organization, GAVE me his Konica Autoreflex T2!! This SLR is the camera that he had dragged all over the world. My serious interest in photography started when we'd be playing chess in his living room and I'd spend more time staring at this enlarged print of Mount Kilimanjaro than at the chess board. He had taken that photograph with the same camera he gave me. I dragged that cast-iron beast of a camera all over Chicago and felt perfectly safe, 'cause if someone tried to accost me, I could knock 'em out with and not damage the camera! The Konica Hexanon lenses are some of the greatest glass, in my opinion.

The first camera I bought myself was a Kodak Advantix camera to have in the pocket for when I didn't want to drag out the Konica.

Hm... somewhere in there I picked up another Konica body, an Autoreflex nT3. I don't remember if this was before or after the Advantix.

To replace the Advantix, was a P&S Kodak EasyShare and I've now been through a couple of those due to droppage. My wife claims the most recent one as hers.

When I semi-retired the Konicas (they still work and I still shoot with them from time to time and the time between those times keeps getting longer), I bought "The Other Eye", my D300 (yes, I named my camera... I name most of my machines, LOL).

 

[Plato]

What was your first camera and how old were you when you got it?
What was the first camera that you bought yourself?

Well, my first camera was also the first one I bought for myself, as I have never received one as a gift. I do not remember the exact model, but it was a Kodak Advantix Camera I purchased in 2001 (I was probably 20 at that time). Thus, Advanced Photo System film is all the film I have ever used. Not a bad little camera at all!

Excluding the several Kodak Brownies that I owned, my first real camera was the Honeywell-Pentax Spotmatic with the f/1.4 lens, which I bought new in 1964. (Manufactured by Pentax and imported by Honeywell, hence the dual labeling.) I still have it and it still works. Of course, it should. The price, including lens, was $400 in 1964 dollars although I got $100 off as a Honeywell employee.