What do you use to take photographs ?

[Hotrodder]

I wholeheartedly agree with Blaze's statement. I have always felt that great photos can be taken with pretty much any old camera because the "greatness" is in the eye of the photographer, and the subject matter. How many of us will pass a day without seeing anything worthy of taking a photo. The person with the keen eye will see and capture dozens simply because they "see" so much more.

I have probably had only three "special" moments in this respect. As a kid I took a quick shot of my dog running in the garden. The result showed a slightly blurred running dog with a tail so long it appeared to be several feet long to a point where it was coiled around the outside tap on the wall. The second was just a chance moment in the garden when a clump of water lilly floated past on the slow running river with a flower in full glorious bloom. I snapped it quickly as it passed into the sun. The third moment was when I was just wandering along the water's edge at a boatyard I was visiting. I glanced down to see a pile of ancient rusty chain lying on the pebbles. It must have been there for many years. So much texture and colour it was fascinating. I went back the next day with a camera but someone had removed it to have a tidy up.

Similar to Spectrum, I started with a Brownie 127, then a Polaroid, then a large selection of Olympus OM10 + lenses, etc. When I moved onto the boat it was too bulky so downsized to a cheapo Fuji digital that was rubbish. My OH gave me a Sony that I'm really happy with. One day when I can properly retire I will see what it can really do.

[nifty]

When I brought my first SLR I had no idea of how to use it so I enrolled in a photography course at the local tech college. The instructor told the class that photography was going to change due to digital technology. I don’t think anybody in the class had a clue what he was talking about.
Several years later I took some film in to an agent for a Lab to get some film developed and asked him if he was concerned about the innovation of digital photography. His reply was

‘It will never catch on’

[Blaze]

[elsie]

I started out with an Agilux Agiflash 127 Roll Film Camera in the mid-1950s. Then, as a teenager, a Werra 1C 35mm viewfinder camera, which lasted me through university. In the mid-1970s I bought a Praktica L (?) SLR for a trip around S America.

I had the Praktica until the late-1970s until I traded it in for an Olympus OM2n (Dixons gave me a ridiculously good trade-in and the Olympus was on special offer). Later I also bought an Olympus OM10 as a backup, for several long travel trips. The OM2n lasted until the early 1990s when I put it on a friend's car roof while putting some equipment into my car. They drove off and it finally fell off on a roundabout. It was only slightly dented but the insurance assessor declared it a write-off. The OM2n was no longer available and the insurers supplied a much more expensive OM4Ti as a replacement. I eventually found a camera repairer for the OM2n. He used cannibalised parts of other cameras so the OM2n now has a baseplate with a different number.

My first digital camera was a Sony Cybershot DSC-V1 from 1994. A few years later I bought an Olympus e-510 DLSR. That lasted until I tried to fit a Pentax mount Samyang fisheye lens using an adapter off eBay (an Olympus mount version of thelens was not available at that time). The adapter damaged the electrical contacts so automatic lenses no longer worked. I had bought the Samyang for a trip to take E European painted church panoramas I'd planned for a couple of weeks later. So I bought a Pentax K-x. I used the Pentax as my main camera until 2017 when I bought an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II. Of course there is also a collection of lenses! I have adapters allowing all my 40+ years of Olympus Zuiko lenses to fit the E-M1.

I still have all the cameras except for the Praktica but I now only use the E-M1 (and occasionally the Pentax) along with my mobile phone for casual photographs.

[Char]

My grandparents (Grandad) gave me a Kodak Instamatic for my 9th or 10th birthday - I have loads of skew-whiff photos from those days. My favourite has got to be the leaning Fountain of lake Geneva.

[niemeyjt]

Yes, my first was also a 126 Instamatic - it took square photos - my first photos with it were Venice. I went on a school cruise with P&O - SS Nevassa - and I contracted jaundice/hepatitis and spent most of the cruise in the sickbay!

Later I got a Zenith E - a Russian camera with a 42mm screw thread - and a 400mm telephoto - and a set of extension rings. Actually good to teach about setting up exposures. Then came the Pentax MX.

[L Austin France]

Just as an aside;
In 1986, I designed & my company installed, the services for what must have been the last large scale photo processing laboratory in the SW of England & maybe the UK. It went from full on film roll printing where it employed probably 100 staff to a mainly digital printing business though the Truprint brand.
I'm not sure what happened to the company in the latter years but it was an experience to be involved with them & see progress of how photos were taken & processsed.

[Richard]

My grandparents (Grandad) gave me a Kodak Instamatic for my 9th or 10th birthday

My parents bought me one too when I was 10.

I went on a school cruise

By strange coincidence I went on a school cruise to Norway and The Netherlands when I was 10 and that is when I first really used that camera.
Even that little camera managed some good pics of the flower gardens in Keukenhof.

[Spardo]

My first one was a Brownie, not the box, the little plastic 'streamlined' one. Used it a lot, including without the lens when on a Scout camping trip to Norway. It popped out and couldn't be found when taking a photo of the marker stone at the Arctic Circle.

[Liz]

I still use my little Olympus C-350 which OH gave me for a Big Birthday a considerable number of years ago. It takes good enough pics for me, and I can edit them on the Mac
Now that I have the right set of cables and insert-into-holes thingys to load pics on to the iPad from it when we are away I'm not inclined to look around for a new one. Greta Thunberg ought to be happy about that.