Beacon Camera Club

These days of lock-down provide very good opportunities for having a good sort out. Whilst going through the cupboards in the back bedroom I came across my first ever camera buried away at the back. It is a Lubitel 2 and from memory it cost my father the princely sum of 6 guineas in the mid 1960s. It was handed over to me a year or so afterwards when he moved on to a Miranda 35mm SLR. The Lubitel 2 is a Russian twin lens reflex camera that was largely based on the far more expensive German Rolleicord. I must admit that it was always a bit of struggle using it. Focussing was difficult using the gloomy ground glass screen and I also found composition tricky with the reversed image. Allied to all of this was the slight light leakage which was very apparent in pictures taken in bright sunlight. Far from ideal for a camera.

An image of the camera and some of my early photos below. The "landscape" is Tarn Hows in the Lake District. Nothing of any photographic merit - just a bit of self-indulgent nostalgia.

Does anyone else still have their first camera (whether it be a box brownie, Canon 300D or camera phone etc etc etc)?

By the way the old Lubitel 2 still seems to work!

Mine an Agfa Silette which I bought when I left school ages ago.

Snap! well almost as it clearly came in lots of different models. My first Agfa Silette was lost when I left it in a car, hitch-hiking (age 18) across the Blue Ridge Mountains. But since then I inherited this one.



Almost as antique, my first digital camera, with sticky tape to hold the battery compartment door closed. Note the massive 1.5 Megapixel count on the front!





Roger

Well, from the limited response so far, it would appear that the Agfa Silette was a very popular camera. It's not one that I had come across until fairly recently. For 35mm film cameras, I had expected the Zenit E to feature highly, but perhaps it is not the sort of camera that you would hang on to.

My first 35mm camera was a Zenit 3M. Bought in 1965 and used for a few years before updating to an Exacta RTL 1000 (I think it was 1000).
From then on I updated to the Canon system starting with the FTb.

can't remember what I had but at the age of 7 I was fascinated by watching the little things open and close and click softly, only later did I realise it was the shutter and aperture blades, 126 roll film, went on to do some processing in the school lab at the age of twelve, seem to remember spending more time mixing up powders and getting the temperature right than actual printing. moved onto Pentax, army Nikons, civvy Hasselblad and 5x4 cambo, stayed with Nikon and converted to Olympus MFT about 8 years ago.

and I've gone back to using film, Kodak tri-X is currently my favourite and before the digital police start knocking at my door there is a big drive across the world in film development and it's becoming a very niche market driven by Kodak in the US followed by Germany and the rest of the world so there.

Oh and Colton has an Agfa which he let me borrow, great camera

Fascinating memories.
Kodak Retinette 1b inherited from my cousin. I loved playing with it without a film in just listening to the mechanical whirr of the shutter at different settings and seeing the aperture vary. It was the best way to understand the relationship between shutter speed and aperture! It had a small needle in the viewfinder which was a guide to correct exposure.
Olympus OM1n absolutely loved it, Fuji digital, Olympus 4/3 and then Canon 5D MK2 from Ian T.
Desert island camera would have to be the OM1n, it just felt perfect. Getting quite nostalgic!
Cheers Bill Fleming

Braun Paxette for me in 1960, still have it somewhere. 35 mm but fixed lens, manual everything, of course, and no metering. You had to reply on the exposure 'guide' in the instruction booklet so as to get anything that was anywhere near correctly exposed. I had a lot of fun with it, though, mostly daft experimental stuff like swinging a torch above it on a 20 second exposure in a dark room, etc.. The negs and slides must still exist in my Dad's loft, I guess. One day, they'll resurface...

Then, after school/college, a Zenit-E (bloody awful mecahnics, but cracking 50mm lens) Practika LTL, Canon AT-1, then AE-1, Minolta 7000 (first ever AF machine on sale in the world), Canon 20D, Canon 5D-1, 5D-2 (now Bill's!) 5D-3, and currently both 5D-4 and a 5D-s. Comitted Canon user - I don't care how much 'better' other kit is, I just love the heft and the ergonomics. Oh, and those lenses!!

IanT wrote

Minolta 7000 (first ever AF machine on sale in the world)

I reckon Pentax MEF (derived from the Pentax ME Super) and a Ricoh (can't remember the name) both launched 1981 - Relied on rather large cumbersome 35-70mm AF lenses made specifically for the cameras, and with systems nowhere near as successful as the Minolta 7000.

[Edit: Actually it was just the Pentax MEF - first AF 35mm SLR. Only thing I can find on the Ricoh is that they made a 50mm AF lens for use with MF bodies.]