What camera really got you going with photography?

[dachshund]

My older brother came home on leave in 1957 from Germany and gave me an Agfa Isolette 120 camera. Manual EVERYTHING. I learned photography from the ground up. My first Nikon was an FM, still with Nikon.

 

[Sandpatch]

@Sandpatch... That's a Sekonic Twinmate L-208 light meter... slightly more accurate than the battery-killer light meter in the Nikkormat... Nikon made an accessory hot shoe that screwed on the Nikkormats via the eye piece screw...

That's all very interesting. I never knew there was an accessory to add a hot shoe. I used a cumbersome frame sort of thing that attached to the Nikkormat's tripod mount and held a flash unit. I rarely used it because it was such a pain to set up and carry around.

 

[bluzman]

It started with a Brownie Hawkeye when I was 10. I even developed my own film, turning the one bathroom in the house into my darkroom. It was pointless I suppose because I didn't have an enlarger but I had fun. The rest of the family was less enthusiastic. It probably had something to do with the unavailability of that key facility at critical moments, I suppose, not to mention the smell of film developing chemicals that lingered.

Over the ensuing years, various fixed lens film and then digital cameras came and went. All I was doing was taking occasional snapshots but with no real enthusiasm for photography. In 2019, however, with the encouragment of an old friend, I bought my first interchangeable lens DSLR, a refurbished D5600 with the 18-55mm kit lens. It rekindled the fire that I had as a kid with a box camera.

 

[pk63015]

Mine was a Minolta XG1..Bought it just after I joined the Air Force in 1981.

 

[Danno]

I started very late. I was a work-o-holic. I always liked the idea of photography. My uncle had a Nikon and it impressed me, but I couldn’t find the time. It seemed I was always working toward something. It could be "go fast" parts for a car or motorcycle or school… or family… than in my mid 50s I had my first stroke and I slowed down a bit than the second about the 8 years ago maybe and I got a D3200. I had to go on disability for a dozen reasons, but photography allowed me to use my brain at a pace I can manage.

I have slowed down quite a bit since Pat, my wife, went home to be with the Lord, but I am getting out a bit more. I do love the Z6.

 

[Whiskeyman]

Nikon FM. I still have it, but haven't used it in years.