My First SLR Camera

In 1971, in my third year at high school, our chemistry teacher expanded his course into applied sciences: his facilities included a complete dark chamber for film development & for making paper copies - and so we also received some classes in photography. We took photos during excursions, using whatever cameras people could lay their hand on - a wide range of cheap viewfinder cameras to SLRs, from no-name models up to Minoltas and Leica. That was the point where I found that my Paxette 35 was no longer adequate. and so I asked the class mate with the most photo experience to help me find a better tool.  The well-known brands such as Minolta, Konica, Pentax, let alone top brands such as Nikon were not within my financial possibilities — but after some comparison I ended up buying a Topcon RE-2. This was a handy tool that served me quite well for over 11 years (given my modest ambitions & needs): it featured shutter speeds of 1 sec .. 1/1000, and a fixed focal length RE Auto-Topcor lens, 58 mm / f/1.8 .. 22 (minimum distance 45 cm). I never had additional lenses, but did eventually buy a set of extension rings for macro photography.

For me as a hobby photographer, this probably was just the right tool. At home I typically used b&w film, while on vacation I normally used Kodak Ektachrome 200 or 400 for color slides. Over the 11 years that I used it, I generated over 3000 color slides and filled dozens of b&w film rolls. Sure, it had its limitations - but it worked — up to our honeymoon trip to Southern Germany and Austria, where I took over 500 photos (that was a fair number in the age of analog film!). Actually, it later turned out that during the second half of the trip the metering was starting to degrade — but that wasn't the killer for this camera:

The killer was — the photographer! We had visited Linz, Wilhering and Stadl Paura, then we drove up to Passau, where we stayed for two nights before finishing off the trip by paying a visit to St.Florian. We had just arrived in Passau and had parked our car downtown, in a parking lot. There was a second, lower part of the parking lot that led to the nearby street or passage. Rather than taking the regular exit from the parking, I decided to jump / run down the little, 2 - 3 m bushy slope, down into the lower part of the parking lot, taking a shortcut. Well, I did not see the green, coated wire that was spanning the bottom rim of the entire slope, some 20 - 30 cm above ground ... even if I had seen the wire in the end — I was at full speed, too late to stop, so I stumbled over the wire and (to Lea's dismay) fell flat on my face, or rather, my forearms. Luckily, despite the terrible sound I did not break any bones, I just had a couple bruises. What probably saved me from bigger damage was the fact that in my left hand I was carrying my Topcon, by its shoulder strap. Once I was falling, I swung the left arm over my head, blasting the camera onto the floor (that was the source of the sound!). It hit the ground on the backside: the lens was still intact (to this day I use it as a magnifying glass), though the bajonet had a dent. The camera body was destroyed beyond repair. Thanks to the leather enclosure, I managed to rewind and take out the film, mostly without exposing it to the bright, full sunligh — there were still a few pictures on it that I could restore! The wrecked body later served as a toy "camera" for Deborah when she was 3 to 4 years old, until I discarded it -

Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

Image scanned from color slide, using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 ED slide scanner, 4000 dpi

I was lucky in the end: the damage was negligible (excepting the camera, of course), I did not need the camera in St.Florian, as I already had a collection of pictures of that place from an earlier trip — and now I had a good reason (and a slightly bigger budget) to buy the camera of my dreams ...