First picture / first camera

[photax]

Hi !

While assorting my netagives i came across my first picture i ever took. Taken in 1971 or 1972 on a Kodak 126-cartridge film with a Agfa X-126 camera. The camera was a gift from my parents on my 7th birthday. It consists of cheap plastic and has a fake photometer window. This "camera" and the pictures that this plastic thing produced, is from todays point of view totally absurd ( it was before the time the Lomo-guys were born ) . But at that time i was very proud to have my own camera with me, because my fathers " dont touch my new Pentax" was not often available. Here are my first two blurred shots: The Vienna Airport and a Beetle as an airport guidance car.
Does anyone else still have his first camera, or picture ?

MIK

[pompiere]

The camera and most of the photos are gone but I still remember my first camera. I got it around the same year as yours, when I was 9 years old. I bought it from Sears with my own money that I had saved up. Like yours, it was a cheap plastic 126 camera. I thought it was a major improvement over my mom's Brownie Starflash, since it used Magicubes and didn't need batteries. And the film just dropped in! And the winding stopped at the next frame without looking for the number in the window! I used it for several years until my dad gave me an old Vito II.

[nikonbob]

I would like to post mine but they were blank. How is that for a good start.

Bob

[Mark Vaughan]

Very cool. All of my old childhood shots are on 126. I was never sure if it was the film or the cheap cameras that caused me to have such a blurry childhood! My first camera was a Nikon L35AF. Shortly thereafter (some of you will be happy to know that) I received an Argus C3.

Mark

[photax]

While scanning some old 126 colour-negatives from the mid-1970s, i realized, that the Agfa-Films turned into bluish-purple and all the Kodak-Films have a reddish-brown colour fog. So i obviously had a mostly red and brown blurry childhood

MIK

[casualcollector]

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash model given to me by a neighbor. I still have the camera, the flash and maybe the closeup lens. Pictures and negatives are stored and, hopefully, will be scanned. Pictures from this camera are the first I developed myself.

[photax]

Bob, what have you done to receive a blank film ?

This brings the story of the worst photographer of the world to my mind. In the early 1980s i worked as a salesman in a photo shop and one day this happened: A man came in the store ( he had a bruise on his forehead ) and shouted " This da..ed camera i bought two weeks ago is perilous and would not take pictures at all ". He showed me some black negatives and continued shouting. I was completely perplexed and called for the manager, who was also helpless. Then i asked the customer to show us the camera and his mode to use it. He pulled out a 126- cartridge camera, attached a flash cube, held it back to front, looked into the lens and pushed the release button . And this was also the answer to his burned forehead. I broke down in laughter behind the counter. I swear that this is a true story.

MIK

[PeterW]

Mik,

Then i asked the customer to show us the camera and his mode to use it. He pulled out a 126- cartridge camera, attached a flash cube, held it back to front, looked into the lens and pushed the release button .

Delightful story. I'd love to know how this customer reacted when told what he was doing wrong!

PeterW

[Deleted]

My first camera was a second hand Ansco Pioneer 620. I liked it because it looked like a better camera than it was--not just a box camera.

The photo was shot by me of my parents when we went on a trip back East in 1956. It's the best photo I ever shot with the camera--most were blurry.

Notice my dad has a Leica hanging from his neck that he borrowed for the trip. He didn't get even one photo (I don't think he ever mastered loading a bottom loader). The only shots of the trip we had were the pictures taken with my Pioneer.

[nikonbob]

MIK

What did I do wrong? As a 10 year old with no clue about cameras probably everything. Although not quite as badly wrong as your customer. That story is just hilarious but nobody is useless, they can always be used as a bad example.

Bob

[Deleted]

MIK:
Great story.

I once convinced a new member of our military public affairs detachment that if color film had been stored in a refrigerator the roll had to be shaken to get all the "color molecules" back in the right place before putting it in a camera.

[photax]

Wayne,
A very nice shot, somewhere i have a similar B/W picture of my grandparents, also with their VW beetle ( but with european bumper ), and grandfather with a Leica hanging from his neck. I have also a Ansco Pioneer in my collection. This kind of cameras will still work without maintenance in hundred years. The prank on your comrade sounds very funny

Bob,
Now, that you are a couple of years older, i can confirm that your pictures i`ve seen on the camera collector are all excellent !

Mark,
I think that the not always planar film in the 126-cartridge is the reason for the blurred pictures. PS.: The C3 is a beautiful camera, got two of them with photometers. Far away from the 126-films. Once i dissassembled a defective one, never managed to built it together again

Peter,
I regrettably don´t know how the customer reacted, beeing told the undisputed truth about photography, because i escaped with a paroxysm of laughter to the social room...

MIK

[olroy2044]

My first camera disappeared many moons ago. It was a tiny plastic pinhole camera that used 828 roll film. It's shutter was a 2-way affair that took one shot as you pressed the release down and another as you pushed it up! Cost me a whole dime and a bunch of Sugar Daddy candy bar wrappers. ;D I think I was about 8 yrs old. I found one on E-Bay, (E-bay photo)



but I didn't buy it. Still have some photos I took with it. If I can find 'em, I'll post 'em. Roy

[drako]

I was 10 and was given a Kodak Pony IV. This thing took awesome Kodachromes! Mine did not have the meter attachment; I used a GE hand held.

One day I will fish out the old slides and scan them.

[galenk]

I,like many others was given a kodak 126 for cristmas in 1977 I was 15 and begged my folks for a real 35mm camera and all I got was a stinkin' kodak 126 . I still might have some fotos from ST. louis I took on my Sr. trip some where.