In the Beginning, There Was Camera & Film

I got my first 35mm camera when I was 14 years old. It was an Argus C20, which was manufactured from 1956 to 1958. I am certain there was a good reason why I got the Argus C20, but that memory is long gone. The choice was probably driven more by price than anything else and I think the price was around $25.00.

That was the first of many cameras that I have owned and used over the last 60 years. I am not going to list them all, because I can’t remember them all. The Argus was not the camera that I took with me when I went to Vietnam in 1966. That camera was a Fujica V2 and it was my camera in 1965 and 1966 while I was a student at USMC electronics school in California. I have a few pictures from the San Diego area at the time. Here is a picture of the Fujica V2 camera.

When I got to Vietnam I had the chance to buy new camera equipment at the Post Exchange in DaNang. I traded my Fujica for a Pentax Spotmatic single lens reflex 35mm camera, and the legendary Super-Takumar 50 1.4 lens. This was my first semi-pro camera with a removable lens. although I bought it with the 50mm lens and didn’t add another lens until much later – but that is another story for another time. Every picture that I took in Vietnam and into the mid-1980s, was captured with the Pentax Spotmatic.

The Pentax camera was outstanding at the time and I shot hundreds of color slides on Kodachrome film in Vietnam. I captured pictures from Monkey Mountain, the main base at 5th Communications in DaNang, and when I was in the field at the radio relay site at the Khe Sanh Combat Base. I still have those slides today and will post some pictures at a later date. Of course there are stories to accompany the pictures, and I will dig out my journal to relive on some of those moments. (My Pentax meter went out in the mid-80’s and I quit using the camera. Later I found a mint Spotmatic in Japan with the 50 1.4 lens for around $100, and I still use it today, along with a couple of additional lenses.)

In the mid 80s I got my first ever Nikon SLR – a Nikon 6006 – and the first of over a dozen Nikon lenses, many of which I still have and use to this day. My love for Nikon started with the 6006 and hasn’t abated. Well, if you see my collection (visual evidence forthcoming), you know my love now encompasses a much wider variety than just Nikon. Looking at the shelves in my camera closet, I see four Nikon film cameras and three Nikon digital cameras, as well as the afore-mentioned baker’s dozen Nikkor lenses. All of those cameras are used regularly and work as good as new.

That kind of sums up how it started and of course the story is still being written. I am a collector of analog (i.e., film) cameras and have several on the shelf. There are two or three that are broken but most are fully operational and get used a minimum of once a year. It’s getting harder to find and process my favorite film, so there have been some changes in the preferred film type and where it can be processed. I like the quality and speed of the modern cameras, but I have a warm spot in my heart for the look and feel of the old film days.