[paulh]

My first was a Brownie given to me by my mom when I was 10 - the leatherette box style that predates the one pictured in my avatar. I shot a ton of B&W 620 (?) film using my allowance money. Then I graduated to a Kodak X-15 Instamatic that used the battery-less Magicube flashes, which I thought was totally cool. I shot mostly Kodachrome with that thing, and still have most of my old slides.

[Colbyt]

Compared to those egg sized, expensive then bulbs the cube flash was amazing and reasonable. I think I still have 3 of those unfired brownie bulbs in the basement.

[benjikan]

Pentax K1000 :-)

[yeatzee]

pentax K200d

[Ole]

My first camera was an Instamatic 100. I remember that the flash bulbs were relatively expensive and that I thought twice before I used one. Hard to believe today where we have a built-in flash that costs nothing to use in even the cheapest cameras!

Loyal to Kodak, I upgraded to an Instamatic 250, which was produced in Germany and had German optics. It was a "real" camera where you had to set shutter and aperture manually, and focus, too!

Next came my first SLR, a Pentax Spotmatic, which brought me into Pentax the system.

[kheldour]

AGFAmatic 300

[Penmacgal]

...... for my 12th or 13th birthday, a surprise gift from my parents who didn't own a camera.

I didn't do much with it but I wish I still had it, for sentimental reasons. Especially now that I bought my first DSLR in October, 2009, a K20D, and I just added a K-7.

That was after shooting with a Canon 2S IS for four years and finally having the time to discover real photography - and what a discovery! I love it, but what a huge learning curve never having had the SLR experience to build on.

[SteveM]

I had an opportunity to go to the USSR in 1981 through my high school (there were about 60 kids that went). I worked as a bus boy in a local restaurant to save up for a camera, which ended up being a ME Super with a 50/1.7. It took forever to save up for it that I ended up buying it right before the trip and had no idea how to take pictures when we arrived into Moscow. I can still remember opening up the box while we were in line for the ferry to get off the island to head to Vancouver. Great memories and a great introduction into photography

I still have the camera but never use it. This thread is enough inspiration to put a role in it.

[hye]

Startede med en Zenith, lige som smc blev den hurtig udskiftet til en Pentax ME og senere en ME super

[nosliwmit]

Some sort of Kodak 110 Instamatic. It came with a bunch of snazzy stickers and you could choose one to insert into a recess on the top of the camera. Instead of flash cubes it used a plug-in bar/panel that had 6 or 8 flashes on it. Probably 1976 or so...

[selar]

First camera was Agfa click III. It used 120 roll film. One shutter speed and three aperture settings, sunny, partly cloudy and cloudy. One element simple lens permanently attached. First 35mm was a yashica diary. First
Slr was olympus om1n.

[selar]

Actually, the very first camera I played with, as opposed to actually taking photos was this, it belonged to my great grandfather:

[Colbyt]

Hey! I have one of those. Not sure where it came from, but I have it.

[paulh]

Actually, the very first camera I played with, as opposed to actually taking photos was this, it belonged to my great grandfather:

That's an older version of the Brownie I started with. Mine was a Target 620 - the metal tab above the shutter lever held the shutter open if you pulled the tab out. Great for night shooting (not!) I never had much luck with it, anyway...

[HockeyDad]

Mine was also an Instamatic and I still have it... this is one of the 1st photos I took with my K-r when I got it a couple weeks ago: