My first SLR camera

The first time I picked up a SLR camera I was hooked. Never got into the old Kodak point and shoot type of cameras which were around back then.

I walked into Jim and Joe's Photo Shop in my home town. Don't remember why I did maybe to take in some film to be processed and prints made. I started looking at the cameras on display. Don't know what it was but when I put that camera up to my eye, looked through the lenses the first time, I was hooked. I could see me taking photos with this camera, yep I sure could. It was a Yashica J-5 35mm and of course it was a film camera, digital was way off in the future.

I don't remember if I saved up to buy it or Jim let me pay him each payday, but I bought that camera. It had a screw mount lenses not like the ones most SLR and DSLR cameras use bayonet mount to day which you can take off and put on with one hand and so quick it isn't funny. No you had to screw on the lense and it took some time to do so.

It didn't have through the lenses metering so I had to buy a hand held light meter. Of course the 55mm lenses which came with it wasn't enough had to have at least one long lenses. Bought a 80-300mm lenses and extension tubes so I could take macro shots with the 55mm lenses. Then an addon macro lenses which screwed to the front of the 55mm, which was easier than using the extension tubes. Was always finding stuff I wanted to add to my collection, filters for color film and black/white film.

Then of course as a true photo buff I had to develope my own black/white film. My darkroom was my bathroom late at night after everyone had gone to bed. Had a B/W enlarger, all the developing stuff that goes with a bathroom lab and the smell of the chemicals for developing the film and prints. Did my own slide film developing. Then got into rolling my own film. Bought bulk black/white 35mm film and slide film with the empty cassettes. Of course you had to have the bulk film roller. And a portable darkroom bag incase you had problems and had to open the camera in the field if a roll of film came lose from the cassette.

I spent many nights in that darkroom developing film and prints and with little sleep went to work the next day probably smelling like my after shave was developer. Who knows I may have splashed it on by mistake.

I learned to frame the shot and get it right the first time since mistakes meant you had less useable shots. Not like today when you take a digital shot three or four more isn't all that bad these days or half a dozen shots. You just down load them to your computer and decide if you want to keep it or delete it. Or try to Photoshop it.

In over 33 years of photography I had taken probably sixty or seventy thousand photos. Developing and printing them in my own darkroom helped and having a friend with a color lab wasn't bad either. I had a shelf of photo albums about four feet long, full of the albums, one album dedicated to nothing but negatives of all the black/white and color I had taken over the years. And in my closet were stacks of slide holders full of slides.

Most of those photos were taken with that old Yashica J-5 35mm. I still had it and it was still working when my home burnt eight years back. I lost it, my Canon AE-1 35mm and all the slides, negatives and prints that day when my home burnt to the ground. I lost over 2,000 hard back books some signed by the authors, around sixty thousand dollars worth of art materials, and art, and more than 2,000 paper back books. But I cried not about the art, art supplies or the books. I cried about losing those photos which I had taken with that Yashica because they were of my four chldren who I had raised by myself. I had just about stopped using the Yashica because the Canon AE-1 was a through the lenses metering system and was quicker to change the lenses and faster all around, but that Yashica held a special place in my heart. It was my first real camera.

You never forget your first real camera. Nope just ask any photographer, bet they can tell you what it was and most will probably still have it some where stored away.