Your first camera

A Zenit E. I still have it to this day and last year I picked up a mint unused Moscow Olympics version (only difference being it has the Olympic rings on it and it would probably fail a drugs test), leather case the lot for £5 in a local charity shop. Possibly worth.......£5.

Typical Russian build quality and could be used for hurling at armoured vehicles.
 
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As far as I can recall, my first camera was an American Kodak Brownie Hawkeye with an honking great flash attachment. This was followed by a Kodak Brownie 127. After this it was a a 35mm the make of which i can't remember, for which I paid £5 in 1961. The camera I lusted after was a Minox.
 
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I bought a Zenith camera around late sixties and took great pics. However it broke down on a trip to Moscow. I bought another in a hard currency shop in Moscow, but the back did not stay closed for long ! Needless to say, resulting pics were not all perfect . I bought a Pentax when home and the quality was quite a contraet
 
I bought a Zenith camera around late sixties and took great pics. However it broke down on a trip to Moscow. I bought another in a hard currency shop in Moscow, but the back did not stay closed for long ! Needless to say, resulting pics were not all perfect . I bought a Pentax when home and the quality was quite a contraet

May be the shock of returning home.

As cameras go I rather thought Zeniths were pretty good and the optics very reasonable. .
 
My first one was one from Woolworths , late 50,s. Cost 7shillings. The prints were tiny and the lens fuzzy! However, I had great fun taking pics. Next was A Kodak instamatic, followed by Zenit e. It was with this camera that I learnt about f stops shutter speed etc. photography was new to me than and I loved learning about lens and focal length, waiting on the prints or slides to arrive. Inspiration came from The Photographic Year Books seeing what different lenses could do.
 
Lazarus thread resurrection alert but why not? This pic is not actually mine, I just searched, but my first camera when I was still in junior school was an Instamatic 110 'dog bone' film cam. Flash cubes too, I used to love using those! Made you think twice though, before snapping away at stuff like people do now. Especially when getting your prints done cost your paper boy wages.
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Now if I want to use anything better than my phone I use my Fujifilm X10. Nice small retro looking thing with reasonable Fujinon glass and manual control when you want it.
I made a nice little leather wrist strap for it too, great for street photography.
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My first camera was a Praktica SLR, I bought a few lenses for that camera, up to a 300 from memory. Then I had a Nikon and stayed with that for about 15 years, my two best lenses were a 20 and a 105. The 20 won a couple of competitions for me.

The camera wasn't reliable, needing a £100 service every year. The most memorable time it stopped working was in Fiji, I went to a village on a tour and was in the witch doctors hut, I tried to take some pics, nothing. The tour guide asked, 'has anyone's camera stopped working.' All but one person said their camera had stopped and that person had a mechanical camera. The cameras started working again after we had left the hut.
 
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