I've used the usual suspects from Kodak before getting into photography "for real". My first real camera was a Nikon F601. This was obviously an SLR way back in the film era. I still have that camera and the Nikon, Tamron and Sigma lenses and the Metz speedlight.
It took me a while before getting into digital. I didn't feel like buying / replacing all my lenses and gear. It was only in 2010 that I got into digital with a Nikon D7000.
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Pascal Hibon
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/phibon/
Website: https://pascalhibon.net/
Asahi Pentax Spotmatic, 55mm f1.4
@bhoward , probably not an issue these days of digital, but the x-700 had a well documented problem with shutter capacitors, which is not all that hard to repair. Not exactly a plug and play issue, but possible for a handy person or a camera repair person, and the capacitors themselves are available. If you still have the X-700 and want to revive it, you might want to google for possible fixes. Those Rokkor lenses could be very nice, and that vintage of Minoltas seem to have had superb metering.
@formerly-bruto I noticed those videos and have been thinking about fixing that old camera of mine. It would be fun to give it a go!
In 2009 a friend bought the Canon PowerShot SX1 IS and switched a few months later to Canon's DSLR-system. The camera came to me. So I tried a lot and the 20x optical zoom was such a great thing! The macro function was beautiful, too. But I made the mistake: I thought I never need to shoot in RAW/CR2. If it counts, this 10MP-CMOS-camera was my first real camera (after some way cheaper point-and-shoot-cams).
After that I switched to DSLR in 2016. Since then I very, very happy with mit Nikon D7200. I started with the kit lens 18-105mm, but that wasn't enough. I missed the superzoom of my Canon. So I was very happy Nikon introduced a new 70-300mm (DX) within the next days. And the Nikon teached me a lot about photography and opend many doors for shooting more professional. And it's still my baby.
Somehow in 1967, at the age of 14, I ended up with a russian made 35mm. My weekly allowance of 50 cents would not have sufficed to purchase anything so to this day I don't remember where or whom it came from.
No one in the family or friends where camera savvy so I had to figure out how to take pictures, no google in those days!
I was going on an Air Cadet trip to the national aviation museum in Ottawa, Canada.
Mostly indoors and I did not have a flash... so I bought Kodak tri-X film, black and white with ASA400. Still have some of the prints but probably not the negatives.
Any ideas what make of camera this would have been?
@andyfrog There were a huge number of Soviet Leica clones, and a few Contax close as well. The most common Leica type was Zorki, I think, and I think the most common Contax type was a Fed. But there were others, includinga few that had no names on them at all.
Back in the longago, when my beloved Sawyer's TLR was stolen, I was living in NYC, and needing a camera, I went to a pawn shop, and bought a no-name, probably Russian, Leica II clone, with a rather shabby but at least real Summar F2 lens on it. Unlike most, this one was chrome plated, but had no identifying features. It worked fine for a few years and then something in its shutter mechanism unraveled and that was the end of it. Fortunately my dad had a colleague who was getting rid of his IIIb, which had a misbehaving slow shutter speed, and I bought it for $25. After running the shutter about 50 times, it began behaving again. That was in 1969, and last I tried it, it still works fine! That old Summar lens, unfortunately, has not gotten any better.
My wife gave me an ME Super from Pentax on my birthday in 1980. It doesnt work, but I still own it, along with a Pentax 50mm f1.7 lens. I used that camera into the 90's switching to Nikon in the late 90's purchasing the N50, followed by the N90S, then the F5. My first digital camera was the Nikon Coolpix 950, but my first DSLR was the Nikon D1X, which I also still own.
It was a 35 mm rangefinder camera named Kiev with metal curtain and its shutter speeds from 1/2 s till 1/1250 s which was as Contax@andyfrog There were a huge number of Soviet Leica clones, and a few Contax close as well. The most common Leica type was Zorki, I think, and I think the most common Contax type was a Fed. But there were others, includinga few that had no names on them at all.
Back in the longago, when my beloved Sawyer's TLR was stolen, I was living in NYC, and needing a camera, I went to a pawn shop, and bought a no-name, probably Russian, Leica II clone, with a rather shabby but at least real Summar F2 lens on it. Unlike most, this one was chrome plated, but had no identifying features. It worked fine for a few years and then something in its shutter mechanism unraveled and that was the end of it. Fortunately my dad had a colleague who was getting rid of his IIIb, which had a misbehaving slow shutter speed, and I bought it for $25. After running the shutter about 50 times, it began behaving again. That was in 1969, and last I tried it, it still works fine! That old Summar lens, unfortunately, has not gotten any better.
I think i had a Canon 7D back in the day..sold it off though, because i just wasn't really into it then.
A black Pentax SLR without lightmeter...then I started working part time in a family owned department store and bought a used Nikon F -1 Apollo.
Yashica FX-3. Bought new sometime in the late '70's - early '80s. Shot with it for a couple of years but got tired of spending good money for crap photos and gave up on it.
I think I originally had a 50mm, but I remember splashing out for a zoom lens. I don't remember what focal length it was, but I thought I was living large. I remember exactly when I bought it though. It was a couple of days before a Judas Priest concert. I thought I was going to get some killer shots. I stuck the body in one sock and the lens in the other. When I got to the door of the venue, I saw that they were frisking everyone, right down to their shoes. I went and put the camera back in my car. During the concert, there was a kid near me, smoking out of a bong. I said "How the hell did you get that in here?" and told him about trying to smuggle the camera in. "Oh" he said, "I came in the other side. They weren't checking anyone." 🤦♂️
Minolta XE-7 in 1977 purchased from Hirsch Photo in NYC :)
Then the Nikon N70 about 20 years later before entering the digital age with Nikon in the mid 2000s.
@bo-gussname /I had an FX-1 for quite a while, which I used as a kind of backup camera for years when I wanted to shoot print film, family snapshots, etc., as my Nikon F usually was loaded with slide film. It was quite decent. Eventually something went wrong with the shutter and fixing it exceeded the value of the camera. At some point I got a later FX with more features, which almost immediately succumbed to a wind gear problem that was apparently very common. Like the FX-1, not worth fixing. Then for nearly nothing at a yard sale I got an FX-7 (the chrome version of the FX-3). That was the lowest-end Yashica, actually made by Cosina, but was quite decent except for terrible quality leather. It came with a cheap narrow-range zoom lens, the 42-75, which was sharper and better behaved than one might expect.
Cosina, along with their own stuff, made this Yashica, and also the Nikon FM-10 and a couple of others, and though they were cheap and relatively bare bones, they seem to have been very robustly made.
@bo-gussname /I had an FX-1 for quite a while, which I used as a kind of backup camera for years when I wanted to shoot print film, family snapshots, etc., as my Nikon F usually was loaded with slide film. It was quite decent.
I hear you about the "leather" - mine was pretty ratty by the time I did...whatever it was I did with it. I don't remember!
I had a split prism thingie for focus and I used to use a vertical object to focus on. Once the vertical thing was no longer "broken" I assumed the focus was good, but I was never happy with the pictures. They always seemed soft. The colors were pretty blah, too, but better with slide film so maybe that was on the schmucks who were making my prints.
The primitive meter - a green dot with "+" and "-" either side, worked surprisingly well.
What I really wanted was the FX-D Quartz. That could take a -OOOH!- motor drive winder! (No idea why I thought I wanted a winder, but all the pros had them....)