The first camera I owned was this 10 year old's birthday present in July 1952, a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye with Kodalite Flashholder, and a soft plastic Kodak Flashguard cover. In the late 90s I found a vintage adaptor that allows you to connect PC cords to this Bakelite Beast, allowing you to hook up your studio lights. Also found a Kodalite Flashholder with a spring loaded blue hard plastic Flashguard that flipped up out of the way while you popped a flashbulb out and loaded another. That camera sits on top of my refridgerator, dust, but loaded with Kodacolor, ready to go.
First camera I was photographed holding was in 1953. I cannot discern if it is an early Polaroid, or some other horizontal folder. Even though I was small (and skinny) back in those days, it looks awfully large to be the Zeiss Ikon Nettar my dad brought back from Germany for me in 1953, a 120 folder. I still have a few of the Ektachrome 2 1/4 mounted slides I shot with that beauty, but not the camera. The first photographs I shot were with my father's unknown brand Japanese twin lens reflex. He replaced that with a German (not a Rollie) TLR in 1958. Still have that, somewhere. I also have the camera I used after graduating from Navy Photography School in Pensacola, Florida. A 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 Busch Pressman with several lenses mounted on Busch lens boards. The US Navy provided me with lots of film, after I cut down their 4 x 5 stock in the total darkness at NAS Miramar, loading up my collection of film holders. Thank you, taxpayers. Oh, thanks also for the use of your locked color darkroom only accessible by climbing over it's cinder block wall after pushing up the hung ceiling panels. Nitrogen burst film and paper lines; all the paper I needed to teach myself color printing. Eventually got caught when they seemed to use much more 8 x 10 paper than their jobs required, then noticing one gloomy day that my locker held all the scraps & test prints. "But I taught myself color processing and printing! Doesn't that count?" I still have some of the prints I made back then. Looking at them in the past few years, I didn't do that good a job of teaching myself. In 1965, without much historical research, when the carrier docked in Yakusaka, I rode into Tokyo on the train and purchased two Zenza Bronica S2 bodies, three Nikkor and one Zenzanon lens, 4 interchangeable backs, and a bunch of accessories such as filters, a focusing lever for the helicoil mount, and a prism finder to supplement the waist lever folder that came with the bodies. Only afterward I was back in San Diego did I read somewhere that the gear train that advanced the film and cocked the shutter was crap. I never had the money after that to upgrade the bodies to the 1969 release of the S2a model with it's completely designed gearing. I never did have the S2 bodies fail on me, but I spent seven years being very careful as I cranked on that knob and listened to the gears gnashing while feeling the variable resistance that seemed to shout "I'm going to break… I'm going to break…" then ending in a loud ker-thunk as the mechanism became freewheeling once finished with it's task. In 1966, I purchased a brand new Pentax Spotmatic, and my fate was sealed. A year later I bought a black Spotty, a couple more M-42 lenses. Had not realized that it was a mental ailment yet. And here I am. Black Spotmatic with it's ƒ1.4 50mm in the drawer next to my desk. Along with the three LXen. On Apr 12, 2011, at 06:32 , Bill Owens wrote: > In my case, it was a Brownie Hawkeye with flash that used Press 25 bulbs > > Bill > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. Joseph McAllister pentax...@mac.com “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug a camera.” –Lewis Hine -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
