My first camera was a gift from my parents that I received around 1964/65 - a Braun Paxette 35 SB viewfinder camera with 45 mm fixed focal length lens (f/2.8 .. f/22, shutter speeds 1/30 .. 1/250) that served me well for several years: I kept it till early 1971. I was shooting b&w photos initially, then also color negatives; in July 1969 I carried it along when I made a 2-week trip to Paris, together with a colleague from high school - shooting color slides for the first time.
The first travel experience with this camera almost ended in a disaster: I took it into a remote valley in Graubünden (near S-charl) where my eldest brother (16 months my junior) and I were attending a 3-week summer camp with the boy scouts; my brother and I walked around the camp, looking for motives for my first photos; I had this idea to start shooting from within the middle of a little mountain river; by stepping onto a couple cobbles I managed to reach a big piece of dead wood that was laying in the middle of the water (the water depth was maybe 50 cm at most, but the water was ice-cold) — all this was almost OK, but I did not realize that this piece of wood was slippery: inevitable I slipped, pulled out a shoe full of water, and in the sudden movement that I made to avoid taking a full bath, I banged the camera against the wood! It did not catch any water — but the shutter was defective before I even managed to take a single shot! So much for the photos from this camp — the lens was still OK, as it turned out, but I had to have the shutter repaired after my vacation ...
