Photography, for some of us, began at a very early age. There was really nothing quite like that early period when photography was as magical and new to us as it was perhaps in the early years of photography.
As you can see by the date marking on this one, it goes way back. If you’ve got one you’d like to share …let’s see it.
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you are kidding right? There is no possible way I could tell you what my first photograph was. I do remember the little 110 camera i had and i do remember taking ‘too many’ pics when I was little…I was probably about 8 when i got that camera…maybe 9 but no more than that. I do remember taking a picture of a dead bat while it laid in my kid brother’s hand. The reason i remember this pic was that my brother yelled at me for getting too close to his hand when I was taking the shot. He was right. The pic had some distortion. Llttle shit…he was always right…2 years younger than me. Anyways, i would have to drive 4 hours to find those pics.
Ah, the early days. My first pictures were of family and objects/scenery, taken with my Mom’s camera. You held the camera at waist height, and looked down in the viewfinder (you flipped up a cover to expose the viewfinder). It took some weird roll film and flashbulbs. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a 126 Kokak Instamatic cartridge camera with Magicubes(TM)! Hey, I was a kid and I wanted convenience.
Then I got a 110 Instamatic camera with–wow–a built-in *electronic* flash. Ooh. That was stylin’. But the quality was significantly less than the 126 camera.
Then Dad decided I was big enough to use his Pentax Spotmatic F (?) camera with 50mm 1.4 lens. He got really annoyed that I could never remember how to load the film. 🙂
Oh, and there was a Polaroid in there somewhere. Being both a camera geek and car geek as a teenager, I took some pictures of a couple of cars I had never seen before. This was while we were on vacation. I submitted them to Motor Trend and they published them. Boy was I ever thrilled.
The cars turned out to be the 1979 Ford Mustang and Mercury Capri.
You held the camera at waist height, and looked down in the viewfinder (you flipped up a cover to expose the viewfinder). It took some weird roll film and flashbulbs.
Lou, If my memory is correct, that’s what I think I took to this party. I definitly remember fiddling around with this big flash attachment that screwed into the side of the camera. Brown plastic thing that had a big flash pan.
Mark, my memory’s getting fuzzy. I’m trying to remember which flash went with which camera, now that I think about it. I think the Pentax had this metal flash unit that fanned out and you clipped together to form a circle. So now I can’t remember what Mom’s camera’s flash looked like. I guess it couldn’t connect on top, since that’s where the viewfinder was. Yeah, maybe it was the side.
Man did those flashbulbs get hot.
Mom recently sold her house and moved south, so those pictures bring back a lot of memories.
Funny you should mention the first photograph. I was looking for some I took when I was probably in junior high, and all of them are gone! I think my mother got rid of them. Figures. But she kept absolutely everything that had belonged to her.
Oh Beth, I’m sure she didn’t get rid of them…keep looking, they will turn up. Junior high eh ? So what was Beth doing in those days ? Nose in the books I presume.
Naw, they’re not going to turn up at this point. My project last summer was going through the last of the boxes of stuff from my mothers. They’re gone.
Yes, I did have my nose in books. 🙁 Dull kid. Really not a childhood I’d care to relive!
Chuck, my first image was made with an Agfa Clack too (about 1954).They were sold in Holland at Hfl 25.- with a plastic case and at Hfl. 27.50 with a full leather case. I still have a few as I intended to remove the lens to make a nice pinhole camera for 120 film. They are still waiting for this "surgery" and probably will have to wait another few years.
My first camera was an Ansco Panda… which had been my Mom’s, for years. It was plastic. You held it to your tummy and looked down into the viewfinder. No flash. The film came on a roll, and I remember always having to go into the coat closet to change rolls, so light wouldn’t spoil the film.
I know I took plenty of pictures with that camera, but can’t locate any of them. I "willed" that camera to my little sis when I got my first 126 Instamatic – I think I’ve got some of the pic’s that she took, though.
Poor little box probably ended up in the garage sale we had when we emigrated from Montana to California.
What a great thread … magicubes, flash guns that fanned out …. takes me back a bit.
Now my first camera was a Halinamat? (I think) and it took a most peculiar film size, I seem to remember that the slides it took were near enought square. I still have a few but no means now of scanning them in, I did try using our scanner but they lose all resolution.
Before that I used to use my parents camera ……… DO NOT Laugh !!!
Picture is long gone, but the camera was a Kodak Brownie 127. And the shot was of my grade 4 teacher standing beside an 1812 vintage cannon at Old Fort York, in Toronto (it was a field trip).
I used a Kodak 126 with flashcubes as my first camera. Nice little square pictures. Only problem is that most of them have turned orange/red over the years. Good practice for Elements restoration techniques. Odd thing is that the ones I took when I first got the camera when I was 14 have kept quite well – it’s the later ones from the late 1970s (my first year at University) that have aged so badly. After that I got an Olympus OM10 which I had for ages unitl it got saltwater damage – it and its standard lens took lovely pictures. Susan S Edit to add: I just went to look for the first photos – I seem to have glued them permanently into an album, making them a bit hard to scan. (stupid things one does as a teenager!) They are from a school trip that I took in 1975 to the Soviet Union – so the subject matter is quite interesting – pity the photos are so dreadful!
Can someone tell me what came before the Brownie Box 116. I can’t remember the number but that’s the first camera I used. The negatives were about 2 1/2 X 5 and if you could hold the camera still it turned out some great pictures. Marty
I was an aged old man of about 25 when I had any interest in a camera. I had never even held a camera up until my first. I was very interested in motor sports and a magazine I read had an issue about a man who took photos of cars and he was carring this strange looking device, small ,and shiny and I had to have one. I saw the photographs and thought "Hell how hard can it be?" Well it taken me a life time to be just not bad. After a half year of reading I went and bought a Pentax Spotmatic and a role of film. The sales man showed me how to load the camera ….but not how to unload it. I shot 36 of the most breath taking photos ever shot and stripped the sprocket holes trying to remove the film. All was lost including my arrogance this entered me into a great journey that I am still on. So the short story is all of my first batch was destroyed, but I am positive the were the best photographs ever taken in the history of mankind.
Chuck, that aol site has some great pictures of early Kodak’s. Fact is in thinking back I had one of those Baby Brownies at one time. Amazing little camera. If you remember back that far, remember getting the prints back on deckle edge paper bound with a plastic spiral type binder.
Man I like this place. All this talk about brownies makes me feel young! 😉
My first camera was a Polaroid Zip land camera circa mid 1970’s. I’m pretty sure none of the photo taken with that camera survive. Oh well, what can you do?
Dick — I still have some of those little booklets of pictures. Got my Brownie when I was in fourth grade and I still have the negatives & B&W prints from my first roll. Nothing very impressive, I’m afraid. When I was in high school I blew a bunch of saved up Christmas and birthday money on a Walz rangefinder 35mm. It had a humungous lens on it and was a great camera — you had to carry a separate light meter but that guaranteed you were aware of the lighting. Bob Warren
CHUCK, Those are great sites and I’ve kept them in my notebook with all my favorites. I still have the 116 Camera. My old single reflex is worth $50. Now if I can just get all that old camera stuff together … all I need is about $1200. At best I’d be lucky to get $100. Marty
DICK, No, I don’t remember the spiral bound photos. What year were they popular? Actually my hands on photography didn’t start until late in life. Earlier stuff was with parents’ cameras and my husband did photo work for a Professor at Purdue who was publishing a technical book. Marty
My first real recollection of those particular booklets is the early 50’s. Before that the pictures I remember where the ones my Dad took and he used his perks with GM at the time to get them processed throught the company.
Also, I still have my Granfathers, Kodak Autographic that used 116 film and had the little stylus on the back so you could "write" your own caption on the film as you took the pictures.
Dick, who is no feeling very much older than he did when he got up.
I think that an Argus 75, not new, was my first camera, and my brother had a Brownie. We shared both of them. I still have mine, and I think that my brother’s might be around here too. <http://www.pbase.com/image/25096862> But when I first got really interested in photography, and I lived where I could take underwater photos, was this one. <http://www.cameraquest.com/calypso.htm> It was my favourite of all time until I got a Coolpix 4 years ago. It got dropped on the deck, and broken, so it is sitting in a box down in our cellar, waiting for parts that will never be available. This is a fun topic, brings back neat memories of a lot of fun times and family trips. Jane
One that I could not find is a #2 Cartridge Hawkeye model C. It is a bit larger rectangular box camera with a small top mirror viewfinder, and a lever shutter. I was anxious to find this because I don’t remember how it opens. There is a metal "catch" that hooks to the front but even with the catch swiveled off I can’t pull the front off.
If anyone knows how the hawkeye opens let me know because I don’t want to force it too much. You can almost see the latch on the top right of it but even unlatched it does not want to pull out and I don’t remember the inner workings to guess what might be sticking in there.
Wow, Magicubes! I haven’t thought about those in years. My first camera was an Instamatic–had to be, since my uncle designed the dies for those. At the time I just thought what a boring job that would be.
I had completely forgotten about my little Baby Brownie Special! This discussion has really stirred some old memories. My next camera was an Argus dual reflex 120 camera. Then I got an Ansco Memar 35mm that I used for years. It was a rugged little camera. I dropped it once in Yellowstone Park and it bounced 100 feet or so down a steep hillside. I was sick, but when I retrieved it, it still worked. The only one of those cameras that I still have is the Ansco Memar, but it stopped working years after the Yellowstone incident. I think I will take it out of the drawer and dust it off and display it somewhere. I do however, have a few pictures that I took with those first cameras. Thanks for the memories!
Pete, I happen to have both cameras -or similar ones- in my collection. Open the latch and pull the transport knob out. Now you will be able to open it. This knob is connected to the filmspool and that’s probably why you cannot open it.
The Magicube was the improved version of the FC4 cube. This flashcube needed a -usually empty- battery to ignite; the Magicube used a pin for ignition.
When you took them apart, they were a wonderful poor man’s Christmas tree decoration.
Open the latch and pull the transport knob out. Now you will be able to
open it.
Did and done! Thanks Leen!
This is probably the first time that hawk-eye has been opened in 40 years. I remember trying a few years ago but like this time I did not want to damage it and gave up.
How many of you remember the old television commercials for the Sylvania flashbulbs? The ones with the "blue dot for the sure shot". I don’t know what the blue dot had to do with anything.
Jim, the blue dot either appeared or went away when the bulb was used (I forget which, but I think it disappeared or changed color) so that you could know for sure whether or not the flash went off.
I seem to recall my Dad always licking the end of the bulb before putting it into the flash – to increase conductivity, I guess… and I believe that Barbara is correct about the blue dot changing color when fired, but it may have been so that you didn’t try to re-use a bulb.
Pete, all box type cameras worked this way. And I still remember selling 120, 127, and 620 films to customers. Most of them usually asked me to place the film into the camera.
Jim and Barbara, The blue dot was the indicator the bulb still was Ok. If there was a leakage in the bulb the colour of the dot turned to a palish red.
Oh my! I remember how the outside of the flashbulbs would melt and there would be little running droplets off plastic all over them. One look from a distance would tell me which ones were still unused.
Leen’s description of the blue dot’s purpose makes more sense than mine… chalk it up to always wanting to be doing something else while Dad was performing the pre-shot ceremony will all of the dials and meters and stuff, so I probably didn’t pay enough attention. Kids…
But Leen, didn’t it also change color after use? I can remember as a child sorting through lots of them for my parents looking for dots, and surely there couldn’t have been that many bad ones. Or were there?
My very first was a Kodak Brownie. The next was an Argus C3 that I carried through the Korean campaign. I had terrific slides of Inchon, the Reservoir, Chinese soldiers, etc. I fear my dear departed dad borrowed them and lost them, and I’ve been afraid to look through his effects ever since in case I’m right. (must do).
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Photography, for some of us, began at a very early age. There was really
nothing quite like that early period when photography was as magical and new to us as it was perhaps in the early years of photography.
As you can see by the date marking on this one, it goes way back. If
Yep, the Blue Dots became a dingy ugly grayish looling color. As was already pointed out that was so you wouldn’t be tempted to put a used bulb back in. 🙂
I remember when I was in 9th grade, a friend and I had free run of the science labs during lunch hour. (they’d never do that these days!) We found a partial case of the old flashbulbs with standard screw-in bases like regular light bulbs, so…….
Naturally we replaced every incandescent bulb in the room with the flash bulbs.
When the teacher returned to start class, he flicked the light switches and…….
Jodi, that experience sounds familiar to me…;-) I did the same thing at home in a table lamp. My mother broke a vase. My father got the hiccup. Nevertheless she still loves me.
I still have one Sylvania flashbar for a Polaroid OneStep (I think) with 1 or 2 light bulbs not burned (ready to use!)…
My first camera was one I got from Bazooka buble gum bars (you had to collect comic strips to get the item for free). It was a 126. Then I got "a real" camera, a Kodak Ektralite 110 (which I still have!). I got later a Polaroid OneStep (I think..). I then moved to a Canon Sureshot 70 (which I gave to my sister last year). Later got a Canon Rebel G, a Canon Powershot A20, followed by an Elan 7e and finally a Canon 10D. There is no next camera in the plan… I think I got my hand full with the 10D for now!
Ray
How many of you remember the old television commercials for the Sylvania flashbulbs? The ones with
the "blue dot for the sure shot". I don’t know what the blue dot had to do with anything.
Ah, yes!! I remember it well!! I got a Kodak 126 and started taking pictures all over the neighborhood. My uncle was a pharmacist with his own business and he used to have all my film rolls developed free. I got lots of practice back then! I remember shooting live shots of a big fire in our only "sit-down" theater and even had one to make the local paper’s front page(way back in 1968!LOL) I have several of them still around here somewhere along with some B & W shots I took in 1963 of my grandmother after our "BIG" snow-we got 18 inches of the stuff. Biggest storm we’ve ever had here in Alabama! Anna Marie
Reading all these comments brings back memories. The first camera I can remember was a horrible dog called the Meteor made by the Universal Camera Company. This was around 1946-47
I can not remember a time over all these years when I wasn’t doing photography in one form or the other. As a teen age kid, I worked for a local kids clothing store. They had a promotion, buy a suit or dress and have your child’s picture taken sitting on a pony. The camera was the 1st Polaroid model made, took sepia toned pictures. To this day I can still remember having to watch where I stepped, The damn pony had a bad case of the runs.
Worked for a time back then in a camera store processing and printing all the film.
In my later years (1970’s-1990’s) I was a newspaper reporter/photographer in the Army National Guard, Towards the end I switched to TV. Loved it.
And now in my "golden years" I take pictures of our two grand children and "process" them on a computer.
I often think, what will picture taking be like when my 5 year old grandson reaches my age (69)
Somehow I missed seeing your mentioning of the Merc Capri the first time round. For about half a year, I had the use of one back in 1973. Sweet little coupe made in Germany with a slick 4-speed stick and a peppy easy-breathing motor. That car was the first to open my eye to the enjoyment of good suspension and brakes tearing around the twisty backroads of rural northern New Jersey. Wish I still have it.
The first camera I recall using seem to look like the ’04 Brownie. Belonged to my grampa who won it in a polka game when he was working on building the railroad in Nevada/California around that time. That camera was damaged beyond salvage after grampa attempted to "fix" it when it broke. He didn’t have much luck with the pendulum clock either. I remember it used to chime 12 times at three o’clock. there were tiny parts left over after the clock was put togather again. He promptly folded them into some rags and stashed in the bottom of his tool box. I guess it’s hard to fix delicate things when the smallest hammer you got was a 16 ounzer. 🙂
My daughter wanted to watch ‘ The Waltons’ this morning and they had the ‘brownie’ cameras for sale in Ikes general store….a big display. How fun is that ?
My first photos were made using a Kodak camera that had a pull-out bellows / lens assembly. The first ones I remember taking were at Kokura Zoo in Japan on a first grade field trip in 1957. (B&W) I have no idea where those prints wound up after my parents passed away. My sister may have them.
Yeah, the poor Mercury Capri has been whatever Ford felt like importing or rebadging through the years. I know what you mean about European cars. I got my first taste while driving my cousin’s boss’s Sob, er, Saab. It sure was ugly but it drove like a dream.
Yep, Lou, I remember the ugly old Saab. The one you put engine oil into the gas tank! Never could get used to the "pulling" of the front-drive cars myself, but it sure was fun playing the part of the Swede rally champ (forgot his name) jumping over humps.
Talk about asking the imposable, first photo ??? I do beleave it was with the old browning box camera,I can’t say for sure. The photo was of my pup "Puppy" (first word I ever said), lord only knows what breed he was. The photo was taken by me at the age of 5. According to my mother the photo and negative was lost along with our super 8 films and most of our childhood photos. I had that camera for many years, then I started using my dads Kodak (the rectangular one, with the fold out baffle). I still have the Kodak in storage somewhere, buried in the back of the locker.
Thank god my mother is still around or I wouldn’t have been able to answer that one. Wish I had the photos and the super 8 films still, it would be nice to reminisce
