Hey guys, I'm curious, what was your first real camera? By real I mean one that really allowed you to explore photography. Mine was the Pentax K50...great camera and I still shoot with it from time to time!
I started my photography journey in 2019 with a Nikon D7500 and an 18-300mm superzoom. More camera than I needed, but that superzoom was handy as hell and probably the start of my obsession with MOAR TELEPHOTO.
Maybe one of these years I'll make a poor financial decision and buy a new lens instead of a car because there's rarely such thing as too much zoom for some kinds of photography.
I just gave it away (along with all my DX F-mount lenses) to an acquaintance whose wife is using a D3500. She gets a nice upgrade in capabilities, a second copy of the super zoom, and some lenses she doesn't have (especially the 35mm since she likes portrait photography). And it ended up being a wedding present for them. She'll put it to good use. I haven't used it in 3 years at this point. The disadvantage of rapidly upgrading camera bodies.
Although I used my parent's analog point-and-shoot in the 90s and (very) early '00s, my first own (digital) camera was the Olympus C750UZ, purchased around 2003/2004. A very compact camera with 10x optical zoom (38mm to 380mm in fullframe equivalent) and a whopping total of 4Mpx :-)
Oh it could also do video at 320x240px @ 15fps
I think I sold it at some point as I don't have it anymore, but to date I'm still processing images from this camera 🤦♂️🤣
But yeah that got me properly into the photography hobby. So I guess I'm also 20 years in the business :)
The first real one for me had to be the Mamiya 645. After my initial Praktica (no idea what type exactly), that I picked up (very) cheap second hand, showed its age, I got lucky, very lucky.
At 15 I got the possibility to get 2 carry cases of photo equipment (consisting of said M645 incl. accessoires together with a Metz Mecablitz M 402 (incl. 2nd flash unit)) for fairly cheap.
While it gave me the integrated power-weight training :-), handling that M645 and 80mm + 135 mm that came with it, also gave me patience and appreciation of good tripods as well...
While 10cm x15cm prints of 36 exposures from a roll of 35 mm film were affordable (even if up to 60% was crap due to the internal metering of the Praktica being rather funky), having a 120 or 220 medium format film developed and printed was quite 'different'.
Financially it made sense to (at least try to) get it right every shot :-)
Of course, the AE Prism Finder helped with that as well (exposure-wise that is)...
But in the end it did get traded in for a Canon EOS 500 N (back to 35 mm again) with a few lenses (and change to spare).
I guess I'm a little older than some here, but when I was 12, in 1960, I was set to go to the Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado. A great aunt who had in her youth traveled in the West and brought back photographs that she treasured over a long and otherwise rather boring life, insisted that I must have a decent camera, and staked me to a Sawyer's Mark IV. That was a relabeled Topcon, a 127-film TLR with a very decent F 2.8 lens, and I learned to shoot it (sunny 16 etc.) and took it to the Jamboree, and took a bunch of Ektachromes of the trip and the experience. It was a very nice gesture, as at the time the camera cost about $70, and that was a pretty hefty amount in 1960. It was also handy because for Christmas and birthdays my parents always knew one thing that would go over well, which was film and mailers (still never could afford to be prodigal, but did manage to keep shooting a little), and one year I got a light meter.
Back then, Kodachrome was relatively expensive, and also very slow. I think it topped out at ASA 32, while the Ektachrome went to 100. So I shot lots of that, although unforunately most of my old slides are now a rather nasty monochromatic orange. But they looked splendid for a while.
That camera was stolen in 1967, starting a journey first with an old fake Leica, ending up in 1970 with my first Nikon.
But I will always have great affection for the little Sawyer, which worked very well, had a bright viewfinder and a pop up magnifier, a nifty coupled shutter and F-stop mechanism that made for a program mode once you had an EV, and a very sharp, contrasty lens. It also had a clip-on flash which worked surprisingly well.
Being from east of Europe my first real camera was ''Zorkii 4'' a kind of Leica from Soviet Union with 3 lenses- 28, 50, 135 mm. ''Zorkii 4'' had telemeter, times from B, 1s till 1/1000s and horizontal curtain and 35 mm film
My first camera was a gift from a friend of my parents.
It was (is) a Prontor II, a German-made glass plate press camera. The cost of the plates certainly made you think about what you were going to photograph!
If this post (my first) is approved, I will add a picture of the camera.
@ksl219 Approved! Looking forward to seeing the camera. I've been seeing some great glass plate work recently, although it's too intimidating for me. I'll stick with film or maybe paper negatives for the time being.
How do I edit my previous post to add a link to the image of the camera on Flickr? - I can see no "Edit" button on my post
It was a kind of replica of the Kodak Retina S1, I don't remember the brand... It was a gift from my uncle if I remember well... I used it during nearly two years when I was a teen, but I disliked practising.
I left photography for years then.
I came back to a kind of photography in 1999 with the Kodak DC290, which was mainly used to create some elements for digital graphical contents.
It finally died only two years ago :D
Mine was a Minolta X700. I still have it! But it no longer works :(
Lots of memories using that camera. I thought I understood the lighting triangle - not really. At least not compared to the immediate feedback we get from DSLRs (and Mirrorless). Yea, the tools are not the most imporant part of phtography, but the new tech does help understanding and open doors to new possibilities.
Mine was a Minolta X700. I still have it! But it no longer works :(
Lots of memories using that camera. I thought I understood the lighting triangle - not really. At least not compared to the immediate feedback we get from DSLRs (and Mirrorless). Yea, the tools are not the most imporant part of phtography, but the new tech does help understanding and open doors to new possibilities.
My first camera was the Minolta Himatic-E, split image range finder. I paid $25 for it used back in the 70's. I sold it to help pay for a Minolta SRT-101 SLR.
I took my first photographic steps with my father's equipment.
Pentax Spotmatic SP II, Ricoh TLS 401 dual viewfinder + a Rollei 35.
The first camera I bought with my own money was a Canon A-1, which was later replaced by a Canon New-F1, which in turn was supplemented later by a Mamiya 645 Super.
I still use the majority of the old lenses on my Z6 today, both my father's old M42 optics like the Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 58mm f/2 Pre-Set (12 blades), Auto Rikenon 55mm f/1.4, some Takumar lenses and the remaining FD optics, such as my Canon nFD 85mm f/1.2 L, or the still existing Mamiya 645 Sekor optics.
I grew up with fixed focal lengths/primes and completely manual photography, so I have no problem with the lack of autofocus for the majority of my areas of use.
On the contrary, I love the decelerated photography with these old gems.
Probably the reason why my heart usually beats faster when I see a new release from Cosina for the Z-moiunt than when I see the latest Z lenses, as good as most of them are.
We even had our own darkroom in the basement for developing films and photos.
My father repurposed our sauna as a darkroom after the oil crisis in the 70s. :D
He was a passionate photographer and archived our entire childhood with thousands of photos, slides and additional Super 8 files.
The current basis for me is the Z 14-30mm f/4 S, CV 35mm f/2 Apo-Lanthar Z, Z 50mm f/1.8 S, Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S and the Z 400mm f/4.5 VR S with Z TC-1.4x, and almost two dozen lenses from more than 7 decades are adapted as desired.