My earliest stint was when I was given an old camera by my uncle. I can't even remember the name (it may have been a knock-off of Pentax), but I know that every time I developed the photos, they'd come out with a blur and some sort of haze over the image. Eventually, when the lady at ProFoto - where the whole town developed photos at the time - saw the camera I was using, she said it was notorious for having a weak latch on the film compartment door. So the door never closed tightly enough, which let some air into the film chamber and always spoilt the film and photos. I still loved it though.
My next memory was my father's Vivitar camera which he bought in 1999 when we went to Cape Town for the first time. It had a big viewfinder and was a lot more advanced than my old Pentax knock-off. The coolest thing for me was that it could print the date when the photo was taken in the bottom right corner of the photo, which I thought was really awesome. Unfortunately, it also gave in when the battery door broke (all these door issues...there might be a life lesson of some sort in there somewhere).
The first time I made my own efforts to feed the photography bug was when I saved money to buy a Sony W55 point-and-shoot. It was a black little camera, and at 8 mega pixels, it wasn't too shabby at the time. I really loved it and took it everywhere.
One Friday evening a friend of mine, Patrick, was taking photos with the UCT Photography Society on campus. I had only seen people randomly playing around with flames of all sorts and thought it was a bit weird, until I saw Patrick with his camera. They were doing a light painting event/outing that day, which explained the fire they were playing with. He then demonstrated to me what light painting was and that's when I was captivated by SLR photography. A new world opened up.
I only bought my Canon 500D in 2010, after trialling and liking the 350D. Once you go black (DLSR) you can never go back (point-and-shoot). My little Sony W55 is probably feeling lonely now, wherever it is.
