CCC Forum

David's PAD yesterday got me thinking. It would be interesting to share memories of our first camera(s). Post a photo if you still have it ! Or source a photo from the web. I'll kick things off...

My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic 126: http://tinyurl.com/cg3wuwu which I had for my 11th birthday.
It used cassette film which came with 12, 24, or 36 exposures, and a plugin flash cube. These were the very latest technology and unfortunately the failure rate was quite high, you rarely got 4 out of 4 flashes from each cube. I was only allowed to use B&W film as colour film was far too expensive to waste on a child !! This camera lasted me through my teens - and yes, I did eventualy graduate onto colour film However, I longed for a 'proper' camera.

I bought my first 'proper' camera in 1979 - a Rollei 35 SE rangefinder - which I still have. http://tinyurl.com/bqno9n7 (I'll post a photo this evening when I get home.) It was the first thing I treated myself to after I started work and it cost me £47 (I took home £125 a month, so it wasn't cheap). A beautifully designed super compact but full frame 35mm camera with f/2.8 lens. Fully manual of course, and the hotshoe unusually was on the bottom. Rollei made a proprietary electronic flash which is almost as big as the camera (I still have this too).

Unfortunately the Rollei got waterlogged a few years later when we were flooded out of our tent. It was deemed unrepairable and I got an insurance payout, which I promptly put towards my first SLR (a Miranda with 50mm lens http://tinyurl.com/cxbtrgs). I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of the Rollei though (it's soooo pretty !) so I put it away. Ten years later I got it out and was amazed to find it was working again ! I'm so glad I kept it as the Rollei 35 (especially the SE) is now a highly sought after classic camera. I really ought to get it out again, load it with some film and get out and about with it...

Cool topic idea

Though the image I posted for yesterday was the first camera I ever knew, it wasn't mine until I "borrowed" it permanently off my dad a few months ago. The first one I ever got was a Minolta Dimage Z1.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2003/8/7/dimagez1



And it was so good my Dad followed suit soon after

My next and 2nd camera I've ever owned is my (current) 550D.

I recounted my earliest photographic experiences in my first entry on this forum.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6

The camera design predated the second world war and had the minimum number of controls for taking a picture. There was the direct vision optical viewfinder which consisted two flaps of metal with apertures cut out which allowed the image to be framed. These could be folded flat when not in use and sprung up when released. There was the shutter release immediately below the single element meniscus lens, a wind on knob and the red window at the rear to see when the film had been wound on to the next frame. The only simpler photographic device I can think of would be a pinhole camera.

A few years ago I saw a couple of these cameras being sold for £15 each on a stall in Spitalfields Market.



When I complained that I wanted more control when making exposures, a couple of years later my parents upgraded me to the ubiquitous Box Brownie. This allowed compositions in both landscape and portrait formats and, best of all, it was a "deluxe" model with the ability to adjust the exposure for sunny or cloudy conditions. In other words, a simple sliding mechanism with two different sized apertures which sat behind the lens to alter the amount of light reaching the film. These improvements did come at the expense of having to compose with a reversed image, however. The viewfinder used a mirror to turn the light from the viewing lens through 90 degrees so that the scene could be viewed in a small window on top of the camera.

Ive always been a Canon user since I can remember. I used a Canon SureShot on family holidays growing up:



Then I the first SLR was the Canon 500 film SLR bought from Lakeside in the early 1990s:



Ahh good memories.

I saw another Baby Brownie on a stall at Camden Locks Market yesterday, when the asking price was £20. The body is made of bakelite, which is in vogue with collectors. I think that might be part of the reason for such relatively high prices being asked for what is a very modest camera.

Paul Heester wrote:Ive always been a Canon user since I can remember. I used a Canon SureShot on family holidays growing up:

Somewhere I still have a copy of the second Sureshot model ever produced, which was one of the first AF cameras and was used by my wife. For the time, it was very advanced and had a cracking lens, as I recall.

There's also the lomography side of things driving prices up too. When you pay £90 plus for a camera with light leaks everywhere, a plastic lens and £12 for a roll of film suddenly a £20 brownie seems like a bargain!

davidc wrote:There's also the lomography side of things driving prices up too. When you pay £90 plus for a camera with light leaks everywhere, a plastic lens and £12 for a roll of film suddenly a £20 brownie seems like a bargain!

Maybe not. The Bay Brownie takes 127 film, which is no longer being manufactured - the last company which did make it stopped a while back. There are still stocks around, although some of this might be past the expiry date.

Which is what you pay a premium for in lomography