First Camera | Pad Patter 7.2

[bestcee]

During Wednesday's Watch Cheryl Scrap, we were talking about cameras.

So, I wanted to ask:
Do you remember your first camera?
What kind of film (or digital MP) was it?
What happened to it?
Do you have a picture of it?

Bonus question: do you know any cameras your parents had? Did they take photos?

 

[Angela Toucan]

My dad had a poloroid. I remember them being developed by being pressed against the body.
I don't remember much about my first camera it was a film camera. Couldn't afford the film or processing at the time so didn't use it very much.

 

[littlekiwi]

Think it was a 3MP Kodak digital camera. Will see in the morning if I have a photo of it somewhere cause I’m not sure where it is now.

 

[IntenseMagic]

Do you remember your first camera? I had a few small 110 cameras with the flash bulbs you had to buy separate and put on, and an original Polaroid camera (that I loved), but my first "big girl" camera was a Yashica FX3.
What kind of film (or digital MP) was it? 110, Polaroid, 35mm
What happened to it? It's hanging on the wall above my desk
Do you have a picture of it? Well worn and loved. I actually just put a roll of film in it the other day, but the battery is dead, so I need to replace that

Bonus question: do you know any cameras your parents had? Did they take photos? My dad was a photography freak and had soooo many cameras. It seemed like he bought a new one every month lol. He had every possible kind of camera made! I still have a couple of them.

 

[marijke]

My parents had a camera ... on special occasions we took photos ... it was rather expensive ...
Our first camera ... for sure a Nikon .. but what type? and I have a husband who is a photo freak ...
We have had all kinds of camera's ...
From the early 80s to the late 90s we had a dark room ... the negatives were developed, contact prints were made, trial prints and then a print of 50 x 60 cm was made from the selected photos ... all in B/W
A number of works hung annually at our club's photo exhibition ...
In the meantime, the 35 mm camera was replaced by medium format ... A 4 x 5 inch camera was also bought (second-hand) ... quite a hassle to take a picture with it ...
The cameras that are no longer used are in a cupboard in the storage room ...
Ultimately, the step was taken to digital ... the darkroom has been closed ...
and the images that are hung at the photo club are now printed in a professional lab ...

A shared hobby ...

 

[KimJ]

I had a 110 in junior high. I don't remember much about the camera itself, but I used it to take photos on the big school trips I went on over spring break. They were week-long charter bus trips with multiple stops to and from the main destination. One year was Washington DC, the other was Niagara Falls. Those were some brave teachers we had chaperoning 60-ish 12-14 year-olds all those hours on the buses! By the time it was my brother's turn (3 years later) they flew!

My dad did take a lot of photos (for the time) - 35mm. No idea exactly what kind of camera he had, but I have about 7-8 full reels of slides spanning from when he and my mom first got together up through when I was about 5 or 6. He switched to prints after that.

 

[michelepixels]

I very much wish I had photos of my cameras and my Mom's cameras. So I went to Google for help, but I don't know the names of the cameras, so all I can do is scroll through images and hope something looks familiar.

The main thing I remember about the earliest camera I ever saw my Mom use is the flash bulb. The bulb was a cube and attached at the top, like in this image. All I remember about the camera body, though, is that it was tan.

That was in my childhood. By the time I was a preteen, I was being allowed to use a camera that I remember being black and using film that looked like this. (Screenshot from an article directed at photographers titled something like "How to know you were alive before the digital age.")

When I was in high school my Mom had the Polaroid camera with the self-developing pictures.

Somewhere around the end of high school or college my Mom gave me my first camera of my very own. I don't remember anything about it except it was a point and shoot 35mm camera.

Finally, sometime in the late 90's when I was a young adult, maybe after I got married, I really can't remember at all, I got my last non-digital camera. I only know exactly what it is because I still have it in the back of my bottom desk drawer. I haven't used it in well over a decade and really don't know why I still have it. In 2014 I photographed it with my first smartphone, sitting next to my first (and still current) DSLR. Notice my fancy Instagram filter.

My Mom was a shutterbug. She has a few shelves of those albums with the sticky plastic covered pages. There are a few photos dating all the way back to when she was dating my Dad. The early photos of my older sister and me were square with white frames and tiny dates printed in the frame. Then the photos are square with rounded corners, but no frame nor date.
I followed in my Mom's footsteps, taking pictures just occasionally, until I had kids. When my now-19 year old was 2 I got my first digital camera, a Sony Cybershot point and shoot. I actually had two of those in the 2000's. The second one conveniently died (I wasn't even mad at my second child for letting it drop off a shelf), just in time for my burgeoning photography passion, and I got that DSLR in 2010. It's a Canon Rebel T1i and I still use it today. Well, I have kind of taken a break from photography for a couple years, and use my iPhone camera much more, but if I do get back into photography, I'll be back to using it, at least for awhile.

 

[HavaDrPepper]

You are really making me stretch my brain this morning!!!

I don't remember exactly what camera I had in the 1960's but I do remember having one that you bought the flash cubes where you had a cube that turned after every use and you got 4 shots before needing to put a new one on the camera. From my googling, it was probably a Kodak Instamatic of some kind. My parents also had a camera in the 50's as I have photos of my when I was a baby but who knows what kind it was. (See Michelle's photo!)

I scanned negatives from 110 and 126 film this winter from my school days (late 60's/early 70's) so whatever cameras we had used that kind of film. My parents got a Yashica 35mm at some point and sometime in the 80's they gave me one for Christmas. That was my first foray into 35mm film cameras. I also have some Polaroid prints from the 80's so we had one of those in the house as well.

I used cheap point and shoot cameras in the late 90's/early 2000's along with my Yashica. In the early 2000's I got a cheap Epson digital camera, the file size was 640x480! I used it along with a P&S camera for my NYC trip in Oct 2002.

My first digital camera was the Canon A95. I got it in 2005 It served me well for many years (maybe 9?) and at one point the chip went out and I got a free fix from Canon for it. Lasted several more years. It was my "in the purse" camera. I loved the size and feel of it and have not found one that lives up to it in that respect. I am a Canon girl though and have 3 cameras that I use at this time for various things depending on the photos I am taking.

 

[cookingmylife]

I know my first camera was a Brownie - Hawkeye? because I was using it in grade school when I was working on my Girl Scout Photography badge. I was about 10 or 11 then. I also did processing with the film from that camera (for the badge), a job I enjoyed but let others process my film once I got my badge. When the Instamatic came out in 1963 I was glad to turn processing over to the local Drugstore. I could afford film and processing with my HS part time jobs. But those darn flash cubes! they always seemed to fail or not turn and they cost money! ( eta-yes, I do recall that 110film. So nice to have a small size!)

I don't know when I got my first 35mm Canon but suspect it was in 1965 just before my 1st marriage in 1966, as I went to England on vacation that year. It was also when most of my photos were in color not B&W. That camera was a workhorse & lasted me a long time. 20 plus years.

Sometime in the 80s I got a Nikon point and shoot and upgraded that a couple of times until I finally got my first iPhone. I've never gone back to any 'camera camera' as I shoot with the camera I always have with me, my iPhone XR. Light, reliable and all the camera I need.

eta:I wish I knew what my parents used as I don't recall my mother ever taking a photo but she must have used my camera when I was in hs or older as there are photos of me from those times. I seem to have inherited the love of photography from my father but again, I have no photos of him WITH a camera. I know neither of them could ever have afforded a camera while growing up.

 

[AJK]

LOL!!! I remember a camera we shared- a Brownie!

and then we too had an Instamatic: (@michelepixels )

and then a Polaroid just like this one:

What fun!!

 

[Karen]

Oh gosh! I think I remember my first camera. I think it was a cheap plastic brownie? I sat it too close to our wood stove and it melted. Oops! I also had one that use disk shaped film and one that used the 110 film. Then I had a cool one that the top flipped up and you looked down on it to frame your image. This was all before high school for me. My Dad and my Grandpa were both photographers. We had a dark room in our house... so yeah, cameras seemed like a normal toy to me. I still have some of my grandpa's and my dad's cameras too. We are also really early adopters of digital photography. We had one before the ones that you slipped a floppy disk into... and pretty much one of every kind since then. Lol. I have a folder somewhere that I was collecting images of all the cameras I've used in my life because I was going to make a layout about them all, but I never got around to making that page yet.

 

[Jan]

I don't remember what my first camera was. I had to buy film for it though. We went thru a few cameras over the years and now I have a Canon SX620 HS. It has been a pretty good little camera. We got our daughter a super nice one with different lenses though as she was interested in photography for a while.

My parents had one of those black box cameras. I remember them taking photos. They always held it about waist high and looked down into the view finder part. It took really nice photos, too. My husband's parents had a Polaroid camera that developed the photos right after you took them. We used to borrow it off and on when we were first married and didn't have one of our own yet.

 

[Cherylndesigns]

What a great thread!! I really had to put "my thinking cap" on. My very first camera had to be a Kodak 110 - they had those black cartridges that you took in to be developed. My grandpa had a Brownie Box Camera (which I still have) and my other grandpa had one of the very first Polaroid "Land Cameras" that came on the market. We had to wait while he coated it with this special solution and then it had to dry.

I've seen so many answers that were exactly the same as the original cameras in my family.

 

[jenn mccabe]

I remember my parents having that cube with those film cartridges too @michelepixels! They were not big on taking pictures at all.

My first camera was when I was in middle school. It was horrible and grainy. The Kodak Disc:

I have no idea what happened to it.

 

[BevG]

I had one of the 110 film ones when I went off to college. I had an even older version in middle school.

My parents had a "real" camera that used 35mm film. They shot slides and I have scanned most of them to digital at this point.

My grandma had one of the old brownie cameras like this. She used it until into the 1980s.

 

[Iowan]

My fist camera was a box camera that I inherited from my great grandmother some time in the 50s. To focus the camera you walked closer or further from your subject! The photos had to be taken outside in bright light too!

I don’t have the camera anymore but here is what it looked like. I don’t have the photos either but I wish I had kept them. Film and developing were expensive. So one was frugal with the shots taken.