Not my first camera
The one of my classmates in high school had a particular way of getting under my skin. I doubt that he ever realized it. I would ask him about a new interest I had and he would tell me that I was obviously not intelligent enough to figure that one out. This happened with electronics and happened with photography and it probably would have happened with music but he had no talent in that field, I digress. Anyhow, there was a dark room at the back of one of my classrooms which you were allowed to use if you knew what you were doing. I wanted to know what went on in there so I asked and was told that I was not intelligent enough to understand it. But again, I digress. Here the camera with all sorts of little knobs and numbers engraved on it it seemed almost magical. About that same time my next door neighbour offered me a couple of boxes of a photography magazine. These were a way to market to neophytes. Hundreds of pages from catalogs for the main part. Over the next months I saved my money and I went to a local camera store and with trepidation I chose a entry point SLR. Something manufactured in eastern Germany and that in retrospect was not my finest purchase. It was all I could afford. And when that camera died about a year later I shed no tears. Not worth the effort. I did learn a little about how many screws were used to put together a cheap SLR. There were dozens. I never got that camera to function again but I also learned that you get what you pay for. A year later I bought something of quality which I the, was able to keep and use for the next half century. The difference a little bit of money can make I guess. I have owned other cameras since that time.
