Cameras we respect?

having thought a great deal about this, I'm going to go with two cameras:

My Dad's old Pentax MV, and my Ricoh KR-5 Super II.


The MV was the first SLR I ever used. Dad had upgraded to a P30T so it was redundant, and I started using it on occasional days out. I didn't really understand what I was doing, but it was clear to me even then that this camera was capable of so much more than my old compact. I took it with me on my school German exchange. One of my enduring memories of that trip is the tour guide at one of Ludwig IIIs castles telling us we could take photos if we liked but no flash was allowed. I had anticipated this and loaded 800ISO film and a 50mm F2 prime. The look on her face was a picture as I simply removed the flash gun and kept on shooting

Fast forward 5 years and I'm at university. By this time I own a Pentax MZ-7, but it holds tremendous sentimental value and I am not prepared to risk it in student digs. I keep seeing photos I want to take but I have no camera which is up to the task. Eventually a friend of mine produces an ME-Super and I decide to get a second hand SLR, one cheap enough that I can risk keeping it at uni. Ebay provided a Ricoh KR-5 Super II with 50mm F1.9 Chinon lens for £30. It was all mechanical with simple traffic light metering, but I learned a lot on that old camera.


Neither of these is particularly iconic for the world at large, but they introduced me to the delights of SLR photography and for that I am eternally in their debt.

I'd forgotten all about that thread but it's nice to hear a story with a happy ending!

Welcome to the forum by the way.

LOL. Technically the K10D was my first proper camera of my own. Otherwise I've borrowed an ME Super, Super A and Finepix S20 Pro over the years.

I really like the ME and Super A and have managed to appropriate them since the original owners stopped using them 10 and 8 years ago respectively.

I remember being given a 35mm P&S when I was about 6. How could I forget about that, used it a lot. It had a wide angle adapter built in which you'd set with the flick of a switch.

My first was also the Zenith followed swiftly by Yashica minature frame I think, then Pentax K100, Canon A1,finally the bestnand latest K10.

Sorry to ressurect an ancient thread, and for heracy, my first slr was an OM1 which I bought second hand in 1985. It has since proved Oggyproof, and that's saying something. To give an idea, I was 17 when I passed my bike test, and 31 when I was blackmailed into taking a car test. Olly and everything else owned took a real beating being thrashed around Britain and Europe strapped to some part of my bike.

Just recently I dragged Olly out, and it is still silky smooth, tight and a pleasure to handle. Top engineering.

My current K20D is a thousand times more capable, abd the kit lenses (18-55 and 55-300) are lighter and more capable, but they feel like a bag of spanners compared with Olly.

We seem to have two takes on this thread: cameras that influenced photography (one for the history buffs) and cameras that influenced us.

In the former category would be things like the box brownie, the early Asahiflexes, the original Pentax (now known as the AP), the original Spotmatic, the Nikon F3, the Canon A1, the Sinar F, the Mamiya C330f and so on.

In the latter category for me would be: (1) the plastic toy camera I got in an "adventurer kit" at age 7 or thereabout. Took terrible photos with an awful light leak on one side but got me interested (2) ten years later, the ME Super. My first ever SLR, loved it then, love it now, although my original is now just an ornament (3) the MX. As I used the ME Super on manual all the time (the auto metering wasn't good enough for slide film) I was happy with manual exposure and liked a few of the other features. Got nicked in Paris. (4) the Olympus trip. I borrowed one for my Mum which she loved. Dead simple, utterly idiot proof but took damn good pictures. (5) my LX. Relatively recent purchase (2005) from ebay. Built like a tank, interchangeable everything (6) Canon Powershot G2. My first digital camera. Also built like a tank and plenty of features for real photography built into a compact (7) My K10D. I have probably taken more photos with this camera in 18 months than most of the rest put together. But then I have thrown 90% of them away which I didn't with the others.

The camera I hated the most was the Canon Powershot Pro 1. Cost me twice the K10D, focus was a slow as hell and useless in low light and died during the first season of the dig. I had gone into the shop intending to buy the G4 (or was it the G5 by then, I cannot remember) and was seduced into buying it. Big mistake.

Cheers, Kris.

No doubting the OM1 is a lovely well built camera but comparing it to the K10D is a bit chalk and cheese. A bit like comparing an old mini to the new one, both lovely cars but utterly different. A fairer comparison would be between the OM1 and the ME Super or the MX which were also lovely pieces of engineering.

Best wishes, Kris.

I was given an old beat up film camera by my uncle when I was 11, cannot even remember the make, but this was the seed that later led me to buying an OM1N and then an OM2N. Had the OM2N for 25yrs and had a great collection of lenses for it too.

But pressure on leisure time by a young family meant my hobby took a back seat and then it became easier to use a digital compact than struggling with taking kiddie snapshots using a fully manual SLR camera.

Now the leisure time has increased again I have resurrected the hobby and ever analytical, scoured the internet for advice and opinions on entry level DSLRs. I am know a proud owner of a K100D (I'm sure a prelude to buying the K30D :wink.

I don't think I'm influenced at all by previous 'photographers' per se, but I must be influenced by images that I have seen though I cannot attribute any to specific people.


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I wish with some regret, that I had kept my TRUSTY Program A, and my Super A.

I traded both in to get my MZ 7, which is still in my possesion, but with a dead shutter!

Borrowed my dads Box Brownie to take photos of steam locomotives when I was a kid, but the first camera of my own was a second-hand Halina Paulette which lasted about a year before it seized up. Then in order, Zenith E, Fujica ST605n,Cosina (cant remember model), Ricoh KR10,Olympus OM10 (hated),MX and ME super both px`d for Minolta 700Si(worst decision of my life)

We've had a similar discussion to this in another thread. Here goes with my fav. cameras. A Kodak Box Brownie my dad bought for when I was still at school; later a folding Kodak, I don't know what it was called. Then after years with no photography in my life I came back into it with - yes you've guessed - a Zenit E. I always thought it had a wonderfully sharp lens.
I was influenced with Pentax by the photographers I worked with who at that time used Spotmatics. I stayed with Pentax when they moved onto Nikon and later Canon.
My two all time favourite cameras - the wonderful Pentax MX and my current love, the K10d.
david

Is it Zenith E or Zenit E : can never remember, Built like tanks though and if you dropped one the paving flag broke

It's Zenit E (no "h") and by coincidence I have a near mint example complete with a Helios 44-2 lens going on eBay later this evening - just in case anyone fancies a bid and a trip down memory lane...

My first camera in 1947 was a Box Brownie followed by a 1920s Kodak Autographic Folding Brownie which I used for 12 years using Ilford FP3 B&W film for much of the time. In 1959, my father purchased a Kodak Retinette IIB for £29.19s.6d which gave me access to 35 mm colour film for the first time. However, I wanted to do things that the Retinette was never designed to do, e.g. close-up photography and, along with many other amateurs of the day, in 1967 I purchased my first SLR, a Prakticamat which at £89.19s.6d (plus £4.19s.6d for the ER Case) was about 7x my weekly wage! I bought it on the never-never! The cheapest Pentax Spotmatic at the time was £159.9s.6d, and completely out of reach financially. The Prakticamat was very good for the time – it had TTL metering, a fairly good 50 mm f1.7 Pentacon Oreston lens, an arithmetic shutter from 1 sec to 1/1000th with one control knob (many cameras up to that time often had two shutter ranges, low and high, with different knobs and were sometimes non-arithmetic!) and a very stiff wind-on lever! However, it served me well. I kept with 42 mm screw mount lenses for 12 years, purchasing an excellent Yashica AX with an f1.7 multicoated lens before moving to Pentax in 1979 with an ME. I then progressed through two excellent MX’s, Super A, LX, MZ5N and *ist D to my current K10D. However, the Prakticamat was certainly the milestone camera which took me into the sphere of “proper” photography.

Actually it was Clarky .....

Not having done anything for a LOT of years I was stuck with my little Canon Ixus 430 (still have it) and decided that as I was in Spain I needed something a little more interesting to record my time here.
I was undecided as to which maker to go with and had more or less decided on a Canon 400D (as my friend had one at the time) but as always, being a fan of the underdog I found this forum, saw Clarkys macro stuff and my mind was made up.