What was your first camera? And your camera history up until now?

What was your first camera? And your camera history up until now?

When we were kids we most likely weren't too serious about photography, and had fairly simple and inexpensive cameras.  My first camera was a Brownie that looked like this one, but somehow I think it might have been an earlier model of it:

If I still have any photos that I had taken with it, they would be in storage back in Canada.  After that one I might have graduated to an Instamatic like this one:

However after that my memory of what kind of camera I used is a little blurry, but when I was in my late 20s, I borrowed a Leica M2 from a client who sold German medical microscopes, for a trip to Europe, and I took colour slides that were so incredibly colourful and sharp I could blow them up on a 5 ft square screen and they were still sharp as a razor.  I tried to buy the camera from him but he wouldn't sell. At a party at my home I spread the slides out on a big table and some asshole spilled Coca Cola over them, ruining most of them.

Later on, getting more serious about photography, my first good 35mm camera was a Canon Ftb:

I believe I also bought a 135mm telephoto lens then, and next a second FTb body so that I could have colour slides in one and B&W in the other.  Here I am, a little bleary eyed (what's that in the ash tray?) when I was in my early 30s with an FTb camera.

Now I was really getting serious, and I bought my first home in Toronto, and built a professional darkroom in the basement. I then started developing my films myself, and enlarging my photos there. I wasn't married then so I would spend many hours at a time in the darkroom totally undisturbed.  For the darkroom I bought an exceptional enlarger, a Leitz Focomat 1c. 

It was the Rolls Royce of enlargers. Once it was set to accurately focus on the photo-paper, it could be moved up and down to change the size of the enlargement without having to refocus it.  I also eventually got an electric drum dryer to dry the prints.

In fact, my darkroom was so professionally set up, with a wide darkroom sink, etc. that it helped me to sell the house when we had to move due to having a young child and wanting o raise her in a more family-oriented neighbourhood. When we were ready to sell, the house across the street had an open house, so we put up a sign as well. A woman came over to see our house and wanted to go first of all to the basement. I asked her why, and she said her husband was a photographer, so she wanted to make sure he could build a darkroom there. So I said, okay, come with me. We went downstairs and when I opened the door to the darkroom she said "Don't sell the house to anyone, I'm calling my husband to come right now. I just happened to have copies of an agreement to sell with the price we wanted, and when her husband came they signed the agreement at our price. Then we opened a bottle champagne that we had kept in the refrigerator and the 4 of us celebrated.

As soon as the Canon F1 SLR camera came out, I bought the first one sold in Toronto (perhaps even in Canada). Other than the Leica M2 it became my favourite camera of all time, including now.

This was a professional camera, shutter speeds up to 1/2000 sec, a top that opened allowing for downward picture view (like a Rolleiflex or Kine Exacta, or the Rolls Royce of cameras, the Hasselblad. It also had auto-exposure with manual override.  I bought some Canon lenses for it. Besides the 50mm f1.4 it came with I had a 24mm wideangle, and a 300mm telephoto, but I bought a Vivitar 70mm to 210mm zoom that was actually pretty good, and I used it a lot because carrying around all those lenses was a burden, especially the 300mm.  I loved it, and I scanned some of my best photos and have posted them at various times on NT. I had the Ft bodies to use loaded with Kodachrome colour slide film and the other with B&W and the F1 with Kodacolor.  Usually, however I just used the F1 with a standard B&W, like Ilford. 

Time marches on, and we moved again, and around that time we got our first digital point and shoot camera - I think it was a Kodak but I forget what model and anyway I left it with my ex-wife because I intended to buy a better digital in China at a good price (and no tax). As well, I no longer had a darkroom so I sold all my film cameras and darkroom equipment.  When I got to China, I didn't think of the fact that I could download a camera manual in English, and the only camera of all the brands that had a Chinese AND English manual was an Olympus, so I bought one. After about 2 years it was stolen so I bought a digital point-and shoot Olympus that eventually broke down (takes all photos in a purple tone and I was told by the company it was unfixable).  Now I use the Olympus point and shoot digital that I had bought my stepdaughter because she doesn't use it since she prefers using the camera in her iPhone.

You've seen the photos I've been taking with these digital cameras, so now what's YOUR camera history?