I'm Curious Who started out with Film SLR's?

[Bill Borne]

and who has only shot digital?

I was shooting film in 1967

--
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
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[Foto4x4]

I first had a rangefinder type 35mm film camera Bill. That was back in 1973. Took it all over Europe and the UK during 1974. I shot mostly slides in those days. We had such a tight travel budget that I rationed my photos to about 3-4 exposures per day! Almost every shot HAD to be a keeper! Ended up with 720 slides over an 8 month trip.

Got my first SLR, a Canon AE-1 in 1981 and it served me we for almost 20 years. Moved to digital in about 2000 although a still shot film for important shots until about 2003. I stayed with Canon until 2014 when I moved over to Sony, via first an RX100II then an NEX-7. Now both sold they've been replaced by the gear in my gear list.

 

[Marti58]

I started a few years later but have shot 35mm 6x4 6x6 and had my own darkroom sponsered by one of my uncles, he taught me all that I needed to know.

Being a member of a family of photographers did the rest, I have many photos taken by my family starting back in 1900 untill now, my most cherished photos are from my grandfather on his Harley Davidson in 1916, his brother who was an officer on The Holland -America line brought it with him.

--
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***Only a fool despises good counsel, but a wise man takes it to heart***
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[edform]

and who has only shot digital?

I was shooting film in 1967

Apart from the occasional use of roll film 'family' cameras, I started with a Yashicaflex C Twin Lens Reflex bought in 1965, a month or two before my son was borne.

A year or so later, I graduated to a Pentacon F SLR with the wonderful Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 58mm F2.0 lens. I loved that camera to death - the lens was absolutely first rate. The single drawback was the imitation of someone firing a shotgun that seemed to be a secondary function of the focal plane shutter.

A couple of years after that, I bought an Olympus Pen F half-frame SLR - my first camera with a meter - you matched needles to set the exposure. That was very nice in pretty much every way - it was joyfully quiet with its revolving titanium blade, focal-plane shutter. I bought it a telephoto as well but cannot remember what FL - I only recall the guy who bought the camera from me, years later, was very keen to get that lens.

As soon as the auto-exposure Konica Minolta models appeared I was in the camera store [remember those?] with a handful of ill-gottens for a camera, a standard lens and a short telephoto [80-odd mm I seem to recall.]

--
Ed Form

 

[HeavyDuty]

I actually started out at about age 7 with a Graphic that was bigger than my head, but got serious with a Honeywell Pentax SP500. Moved on to a pair of Pentax MXes, and then quickly to Nikon when I got a job at my first paper.

 

[seri_art]

I started with a Kodak Tourist folding camera. 620 film, 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 negatives, /200 shutter and f/4.5 lens Next was a Leica IIIf with 50mm Summitar, bought at wholesale from my professional photographer uncle. Then an Olympus OM-1 SLR, the first "small" SLR.

 

[Bill Borne]

I got married in 1975 or 76? Bought a Konica TC 35mm slr. Set up a darkroom in the spare bedroom.

A funny Story....

That NYE I was developing and enlarging B&W photos and my wife says she wants to celebrate NYE. I told her I was busy. So she went out without me, after a fight about it. About 3 in the morning I hear something in the living room and see her lying on the couch vomiting over the edge of it on the floor. I said.."That will teach you!"

But guess who had to clean it up????

I also started shooting 8mm video when I was 17 in 1967.

 

[Bill Borne]

Do you think people who started out with film have an advantage of any kind over people who started out with digital?

I think that when you used film you had to get the shot right in all respects the 1st time?

or Money down the drain.

So after you could get consistently nice photos with film going to digital you are trained to get it right when you press the shutter button which gives a better final photo before and after processing??? Hope I worded that right?

And coming from film is why I always use EVF rather than the lcd... Habit is part of it.

And I am not trying to be condescending or looking down on people who only know digital.

What got me into digital was I borrowed a 707 from a friend and took a bunch of shots and had printed at 1 hour printing. Compared the prints to many of my prints from film camera and digital ones were so much better look and sharper in all respects. Ordered the 707 that day and never looked back.

Sold my Nikon N80 and several lenses to a relative for $100...Took a lot of guts for me to do that!

--
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos

 

[azyjjk]

My first 35mm camera was a Kodak Retina IIa I got in 1958 (I still have it). My first SLR was a Pentax Spotmatic I purchased in 1970 (I still have 3 of them). Now I have 3 Pentax DSLR's and a couple of Sonys.

 

[Plyta]

Hi .
When I was 12, I received a gift a type 35mm film Lomo Smena 8M. Great memories: development strips, red light in darkroom, chemical smell..

1979 Zenit E with Helios 40-2 Lens.

Since 1995, I worked for 2 years as a laboratory Fujilab - print photos.
There are things to remember about the films.

 

[Digital Nigel]

I first had a rangefinder type 35mm film camera Bill. That was back in 1973. Took it all over Europe and the UK during 1974. I shot mostly slides in those days. We had such a tight travel budget that I rationed my photos to about 3-4 exposures per day! Almost every shot HAD to be a keeper! Ended up with 720 slides over an 8 month trip.

Got my first SLR, a Canon AE-1 in 1981 and it served me we for almost 20 years. Moved to digital in about 2000 although a still shot film for important shots until about 2003. I stayed with Canon until 2014 when I moved over to Sony, via first an RX100II then an NEX-7. Now both sold they've been replaced by the gear in my gear list.

Yes, I started with a cheap Halina 35mm film fixed lens camera in the 1960s (it might have been this model), and got my first SLR in the early/mid 1970s. It was completely manual and very basic, but you certainly learned a lot with a camera where every decision was yours.

My first semi-automatic camera was also a Canon AE-1, and I graduated to a Canon T90, which I didn't like as much. I'd moved on to EOS SLR film cameras in the late 1980s, culminating in an EOS 10QD (with three focus points!) but found that I hardly used those heavy cameras, and so was happy to switch to a little Fuji digital compact in 2000. The pictures weren't nearly as good as film back then, but the convenience was what I valued more.

After a few more small compacts, I got a Minolta DiMAGE A1 which was, I suppose, the predecessor to the Sony RX10 range. But then I got my first DSLR, a Nikon D70. It wasn't till 2010 when I got my first Sony, a NEX-5. Since then, I've accumulated four more Sony cameras, as well as various Canon, Panasonic and Nikon models.

 

[717]

and who has only shot digital?

I was shooting film in 1967

--
"Life's Too Short to Worry about the BS!"
So I Choose my Battles
Click for Wild Man's Photos

I did - my first SLR was a Minolta SRT-200.

 

[W5JCK]

As a young kid in the mid-1960s I was helping my parents clean out and organize their attic. I found an old (1930s or 1940s?) Kodak Brownie Box camera. That became my first camera. I only got to take a few photos with it though as we were money challenged and I was way too young to work and earn my own money. So film was only purchased on rare occasions. I had great fun with it. No clue what ever happened to it.

I then progressed to some of those 110 cameras in the 1970s. They were rather popular back then. I took a lot of photos with those.

I finally bought my first 35mm film SLR in 1984. I think it was a Minolta x700. I used it for many years.

I never set up my own developing lab. I always wanted to, but never got around to doing it. So I went from the old days in the 1960s when you snail mailed film off to be developed and got back photos in a few weeks, to the latter days of film popularity when 1 hour processing became all the rage.

In the early 2000s I bought my first digital camera, a whopping 1MP Olympus. It pretty much took thumbnail size photos!

I've always been a hobbyist when it comes to photography. With the exception of the Kodak Brownie Box camera, I never shot any film larger than 35mm. I shot a lot of slides on a tour of Europe and the Middle East back in 1984, but never did that again. But to be honest I do not miss film at all. I much prefer digital. I was an early adopter to computers getting my first one in 1981, so digital comes naturally to me. I have a photography friend who had a difficult time moving to digital in the early to mid-2000s from medium format, but that was due to his lack of computer skills more than anything else.

 

[busch]

it was probably about 70 years ago. My father was an aerial photographer in the Army Air Force so I grew up with a camera in my hands. Here is a photo from way back when:

--
Busch
Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.
My Photos

 

[BertIverson]

Hey Bill,

I started with film in the 1950s.
(1) No name 35mm rangefinder,
(2) 1961 Yashica twin-lens reflex 120,
(3) 1963 35mm SLR (with macro bellows) -- do not remember the brand.
First digital was 3MP Canon A70 in 2003

Cheers,
Bert

 

[rapick]

I started using film compacts in the '70s.

Then my 1st SLR was a Konica TC (just like you!) in the early '80s. Built a 'system' with several lenses from 28 mm to 200 mm, including a rather rare and highly praised 35-70 mm zoom. Upgraded to a newer body, with auto-winder, 'advanced' metering and electrically controlled shutter. That was defective. 1oo2 frames came completely black. Sent again and again to factory for repair. Never fixed!

Got back to compact: Olympus XA! Mythical fixed lens 35 mm camera. Same size as nowadays RX100 (+/- 2 mm). Did you know?

Went to digital in the late '90s with an awfully expensive (!) Sony Mavica FD. It produced VGA size images and stored them (not so many!) in a 3.5" floppy disc. I used to borrow it from the office where I worked.

My own 1st digicam was a Nikon Coolpix 995 in 2002. 3 MP, a big step ahead! A terrific camera. Got WC and TC converters for it.

Jumped to DSLR with the Oly E-300 in 2005.

Then back to Nikon: D200 in 2007. D700 in 2012.

Fell in love with the tiny RX100 III last year.

--
Rapick
Albums: http://rapick.jalbum.net/

 

[BertIverson]

Do you think people who started out with film have an advantage of any kind over people who started out with digital?

hahahaha

In mid 1960s, I got into macro photography with a bellows on my SLR and Kodak slide film. I had formulas to figure out the exposure, ISO 25 film, kept a diary of how each photo was taken (so when I got the slides back from Kodak 2 weeks later I could make more notes of what went wrong :-x). Lots of motion blur (wind-blown flowers and ISO25) and exposure issues. I still have that hard-bound survey notebook.

Today, for macros, it's RX10 Plus Polaroid achromatic close-up lens and Nissin i60 on-camera flash. If I get the focus right each flower is a keeper and I get to check about 1 sec after the shot

Great thread you started Bill.

Thanks,
Bert

 

[snappyden]

Bill,

I used cheap cameras until 1978 (30 years old then) when I bought a new Nikon FE SLR with 3 Nikkor lenses. Used them extensively (slides) and took them to Europe every year for the next 5 years, then decided it was too much crap to carry along. Sold it all in 1984. Bought the first Canon Rebel DSLR many years later, then a Nikon D40, then about 25 various cameras, including 4/3 Olympus cameras, and now just use an old Panasonic ZS19 and a Sony RX100i. I think almost daily about getting something like a Sony RX10III or a Panasonic FZ1000 or LX100, but just love the convenience of pocket sized cameras.

More than you needed to know, lol.

Den

P.S. I still have about 15000 slides and have had some digitized, but not well done.

 

[jonl9]

Bill, I started in 1968 in the era of the Pentax Spotmatic.

But then, I remember WWII

Jon Larson

 

[Jerry045]

Bill:

Some 40 years ago I started off with a Practika SLR camera with three screw on lenses. I moved to a Pentax SLR then fell in love with a new Canon EOS camera that had just come out with "autofocus" capability. For many years, I upgraded with each new EOS body as they were announced. Finally my last two bodies, an A2E and 10S were my last film cameras. I went over to the dark side and went digital.