WayneL Loc: Baltimore Md

I had a cheap 110 camera and I was at a biker event and some girls were dancing on the stage topless. I took some pics and they turned out terrible. I told myself never again so I went and bought a good camera. It was a Minolta 7.
.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Just a comment: looks like military service was responsible for many people’s interest - I wouldn’t have guessed that but should have. In VietNam, the PX sold cameras, and a fair number of GIs bought them, likely because this was something new and interesting to photograph. For me access to the PIO darkroom on base was a big motivator (I still have that stained Kodak Darkroom Data Guide and it’s still useful).

Abo

I bought a Polaroid Colorpack 80 from the ASCO store when I was in bootcamp.
I shot images of my fellow recruits and sold the photos to them for a small profit.

It reliably made good images that were focused and well exposed,
however I gave little thought to the artistic side of Photography...
until my girlfriend gave me her Zenit SLR with a seriously sharp,
fast 35mm lens to shoot her brothers wedding.

Those images and the control of depth of field
blew me away... The quality and precision of that excellent machine;
how good it was to use also grabbed me. It was that camera
that got me hooked. After that I used that dear girls Zenit far more than she did...
Anyway I wound up buying a Nikon FM.

Image downloaded from Wikimedia

Abo

Frame one spins my wheels

Frame 2 grabs me too.

WesIam Loc: Phoenixville, Pa

I started Photography with my father's Brownie box camera.My father was a great photographer with that old box camera.That's were I started and I have been doing photography every since.I had quite a few cameras over the years.

SteveFranz Loc: Durham, NC

My first camera was a Minolta 16 miniature camera. (I still have it) I bought it in late 1961 or early '62 when I was in the Marines, stationed in California. Prior to that I used whatever camera's I found at home that had been used and put away by my dad or big brother and sisters.

The M16 was a great camera, but I didn't really know much about photography or making the most of that camera. I did get some decent pictures, but sadly after moving around the country most of them have disappeared.

Abo

:-)

revhen Loc: By the beautiful Hudson

My father had a Kodak "postcard" camera and he took great European shots in 1927 and family shot after that. That inspired me to do photography. I think my first was a Kodak, not the cheapo, but a fairly good one in the 1960s. It could take Kodachrome slides which I loved. My wife took it on a trip from Philadelphia to Big Sur -- and left it in the airplane seat pouch! So I got a great rangefinder Olympus 35SP which I used on trips to Europe and the Middle East. Kept upgrading till present Canon 80D.

Ioannis

Back in early seventies my wife saved every penny to buy me a Polaroid camera at our first university. Well for some reason I didn’t like it and I returned it to get a Yashica electro 35 film camera, which is part of my camera collection. We still married and we have a drawer full of receipts from many gifts she has purchased for me through the years. Those store receipts have become very handy as I have used them to return many gifts I have received to build a large selection of cameras as well many names I can’t repeat.

fhayes Loc: Madison, Tennessee

A little history of mine first-
When I was a kid in the 1950s, my mom had a Kodak Brownie I was allowed to use it and we went to Mexico to visit her family. I brought it along and shot mainly historical buildings.

Skip a few years- my 14th birthday and my sister gives me a Polaroid Swinger! This was LOTS of fun!

My tour in the US Army, 1971-1974 and I was shown cameras by those with the camera bug. Everyones was better than anyone else's it seemed. This was overpowering and I had zero interest in photographic equipment from there.

In 1975, my wife expressed an interest in photography but only in me pursuing it because she thought I 'would be really good at it'. A Minolta SRT100 with a 50mm lens developed a love affair with film!

In 2000, a new wife thought I should flow with the times and nudged me towards digital with a 'point and shoot' gadget. This quickly led to what I would call 'a real camera' and soon embraced a Nikon D90. This was pretty cool but my love for film burned inside me. I enrolled in a film photography class at the local junior college, at the end of the second semester I wanted more. The instructor took me on as a class assistant! This fueled a desire to have my own darkroom. Now I have both worlds, Film is everything from 35mm to large format 4X5. Digital had also grown though I try to use as few digital enhancements with it.

shoelessjoe

The Movie Blow Up with David Hemmings directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Came out in 1966.

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

I won a Ansco Panda in a school contest when I was about 8 or 10 years old and I still have this camera.  The Panda is a plastic 620 film camera intended for children by Ansco between c.1939 and 1950. As my parents were not flush with money, I was not allowed to use it very often. I was always interested in airplanes so occasionally I was allowed to visit The Cherry County Airport (Traverse City, MI) and I could take a (very) few pictures of any unusual aircraft that may vist duing the summer. I had an older famliy (friends) who were into airplanes and one summer they took me with them to a glider event at a club meet in Frankfort, Michigan. Somehow this is the only photo I can attribute to my early photography experience.  Years later, when I graduated from high school, my parents and grand parents bought me an Argus C-3 Match Matic 35 mm camera. I took more photos after that but I was still limited by a lack of $$ and another story.

Ansco Panda 620 film camera


Frankfort Club Glider - Sometime in mid-50s.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

Saw that Movie, liked it, do you remember a TV show about a photographer, Jackie Cooper?, Collins? had a dog named Cleo in it, Basset hound, think it ran on Sunday nights.

Overthehill1

My first experience in photography was in my senior year of high school in 1970. A friend started taking yearbook pictures with his Konica 35mm and developing them in the school's virtually unused darkroom. At some point, he told me that it was possible to smoke there because it had a ventilation fan and a red light outside indicating you were processing film, which kept teachers from barging in. We spent most free periods the rest of the year puffing away, and I did learn how to process b&w film and print pictures at the same time.
After graduating college several years later with a journalism degree, I was hired as a correspondent by the local paper, a job that also required taking pictures. My dad bought me a Minolta SRT 201 with a 50mm lens. My editors liked my pictures, so whenever I was not covering a meeting of the town council or school board, I'd drive around town taking photos. Since I was being paid 35 cents per inch for stories, and $5 apiece for photos, I took a lot of photos, eventually earning enough to purchase a 24mm and 135mm lens. A couple of years later, when I was a staff reporter, and still expected to take pictures, the same friend told me about a Nikon F2 that someone was selling. I sold my Minolta and bought it. My beat at the time was the county courthouse, and when I wasn't covering murder trials or writing about crooked lawyers, I'd hop on my motorcycle and spend the afternoon riding around, photographing whatever looked interesting. Good times for sure. Spent 37 years as a working journalist, and even though the photography aspect diminished in later years, my camera was always with me on vacations and trips. Retired seven years ago, and photography is one of the two hobbies that occupy much of my time. Got my first digital, a Nikon D100 for my 50th birthday, later followed by a D7000 and currently a D500. Finally joined a camera club earlier this year, and am glad I did. For those interested, I quit smoking in 1984 and had to
sell the motorcycle in the 90s after all my camera equipment was stolen.

Billynikon2

I got a brownie when I was 8 and loved going to the airport to take pictuers of planes. My father lent me a Rollie and I learned about staring down when I took pictures. When I was 12 I was cutting grass for money and was a paperboy and I saved my money to get a Minolta rangefinder. Can't remember what it was called. That did me until I got a Nikon in Hawaii.