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Do you still have your very first camera?


Ambro51

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It sits today in my collection, a gift I think on my 7th birthday. A little plastic camera, obsolete today, thanks to its 620 film. My companion on class trips, weekend camping, the Philadelphia zoo.....it was my camera until replaced by a Kodak x15 ( rendered obsolete by its 126 film). So, this is it. A Hero Imperial, a grand name for a simple little camera. It changed my life......6E89971B-33B3-46B3-BA86-886CA930BDC9-140

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Fantastic. I have my firt, or better, my father's one. It's his Spotmatic but I started using it since he stopped taking pictures. Actually is not the real one, is the same model I've bought years ago.

This because the other one it's been stolen many years ago.

When I was young, one day I was at the beach taking pictures and I used to keep the camera under the parasol, over the metallic little sticks.

I went back home for lunch and I completely forgot I had the camera under the parasol. I don't remember if I realized the same day on afternoon or the day after. Anyways when I went to the beach again I couldn't find even the parasol itself, figure the camera...

Too bad because that day I also took some great portraits of a friend of mine's butt in bikini, doing splits on the beach.

Bad luck.

Always feeling sorry about the camer, I 've bough it aftr years and I guess my father was happy. The good thing is the camera is in perfect conditions and the light meter works perfectly.

Edited by lleo
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Oddly enough the first camera I used was this Leica IIIb with collapsible 50mm f2 Summitar;

 

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This snap was taken a couple of years ago(!). I'm on the left sitting with my brother (and fellow forumite) who has had the keeping of the IIIb since our father (whose camera it was) passed away. Incidentally the camera my brother is holding was a 'Rand' branded Diana 120 (2 1/4 square) and WAS the first type of camera I owned. We both received one each as a present but, clearly, I had an eye for a good thing....

 

Pip.

 

 

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Mine was a Kodak Brownie Cresta, 14th birthday in '58. 12 on 120.  The only Brownie with 'interchangeable lens', it kept falling out as the circlip holding it in wasn't strong enough, absolutely symmetrical so it didn't matter which way round you put it back!  Still got it somewhere, as well as my sister's first, a real Brownie box camera for 8 on 620.  She presented it to me a few years ago, to 'add to my collection' !

First 35mm was an Arette 1b, but its Isconar lens was not very exciting so I was glad to part exchange that for a Retina 1a a short while later.  You didn't keep good cameras in those days when 'moving up'  to better ones as they were worth a bit in trade, so it went for a IIf Leica, and via a Pentax to an M3 which I DO still have.

 

Gerry

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I still have the very first camera that I touched, which was my Dad's Halina A1 from the late 1950's - I don't now have the 127 my Dad and Mum gave me subsequently or the Mark 111 Brownie that my Brother gave me but I do have the first serious camera that I bought myself, which is my Nikon FE2

Edited by robert_parker
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The first one I TOUCHED was one of the two Zeiss of my Dad :Super Ikonta 6x9 - Tessar 105 - and a "light" Contina - Pantar 45mm (I remember it had a no trivial semicoupled meter... based on EV values...) ; quite probably the Contina was the first I put my hands on (he considered the 6x9 "not for children"). The Contina was stolen years after... the Super Ikonta is still with me, pretty operative.

Edited by luigi bertolotti
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No, but as best as I can remember, it was a miniature "spy" camera of some sort which I ordered thru a breakfast cereal promotion in the early 1950s. I remember a relative giving me a fixed lens/fixed aperture TLR around that time also, but I passed it along to my younger brother. I know there was a Brownie somewhere in there, and I remember using my mother's Goertz Minicord...but my first camera I purchased with my own money was an Ansco Memar, traded in for an early Ricoh 500, which became disfunctional within the warranty period, and they replaced it with a newer version 3 model. Although I no longer have the originals of the Ricohs which I bought in my mid-teens, I replaced them about 10 years ago, and love shooting with them even today...not up to Leica standards, but really ergonomic cameras with very fast dualfocusing levers.

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My first camera was a Leica IIIa, No. 308598 made in 1938, with a summar. My father brought it home from the war, where he served in the 17th Photo Reconnaissance Group of the 13th Air Force. Flying P-38 planes, stripped to the least possible weight, and loaded with a camera. Most likely a large format movie camera. But, he gained a love for photography, that led to this first Leica. I inherited it in 1966, and it started a  long affair with collecting Leicas. I still have the camera.

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Bought in the Isle of White Uk (Franka - Circa 1955-working)

(1950 Box Brownie-Long gone :() - 

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Edited by Manoleica
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Yep. Nikon EM.  Simple little camera bought when I was at medical School in London from Rother Cameras in Tottenham Court Road, in 1981. I still have all the papers, but the box and original E-series 50mm lens have, like Rother Cameras, long since disappeared......

 

But what I really wanted was a used F Photomic.  Back in those days I didn't have the courage (or cash!) to buy such a complex machine used, so I bought a new EM.  In my first year my halls of residence were close to the West End and I remember peering into the windows of the dealers (such as Fox Talbot and Leopold Cameras - both long gone) in the evenings looking longingly at used F and F2 cameras. Memories.....

 

 

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Both my wife Colette and myself have kept our very first camera. Her's is a 1947 Kodak Baby Brownie, mine a 1946 Jodak Brownie C.

 

 

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My older sister and I were both given black Bakelite Baby Brownies in 1949-50. I believe my sister still has one of them. Then I had a later Brownie Holiday Flash that I used Into high school and started developing the 127 film. That camera became deceased when my home-made plexiglass underwater case imploded while diving near 100 ft down. I recently found some underwater prints taken before that event (around 1962).

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Great pic, Pippy.

Actually I've just remembered that I had a plastic compact camera when I was young, maybe a Kodak but who knows...

But before the Pentax I used to have my father's Minolta, while he was using the Spotmatic. Then I started using the Pentax when he stopped taking photos.

I touched again the Minolta just today, to take this pic, after 20 or 30 years maybe. And what huge surprise was seeing it's a rangefinder model.

These things brought up alot of memories. It's a time machine.

gallery_30932_5259_23901.jpg

(Gretel always curious)

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No. My first camera was a Kodak 828 given to me by my father and which I used to shoot Kodachromes on. Sadly it died a shutter failure death and was unrepairable and consigned to goodness knows where but I suspect it is in landfill. A Zenith B with f/3.5 Industar took over before being traded for another camera and so on. 

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