In honor of world camera day, I thought it might be fun to post about my first "real" 35mm camera. My first 35mm was a Yashica ElectroX and in my sophomore year at URI I found this very tired nearly worn out used Nikon F with a F36 motor drive hung off of it. It sounded like a Singer Sewing machine that grandma had when it went off and had more than a little brassing on the body and the mirror slap was something you could hear a block away. I flogged that camera all over the place and ran my share of film thru it as only an intro photo student could who owned a bulk loader. It was a heavy piece of work and even with a 50mm lens on it, its weight was daunting. Loading it in the field required some level of dexterity too as the back slid off along with the drive.
That summer I worked in an all you could eat seafood joint and earned enough money to buy a new Nikon, an F2 Photomic, it was a thing of beauty and I had that camera all thru grad school and into my first teaching job, but that old F was my first Nikon.
