I wish I remembered exactly which model it was, but I don’t. All I remember is that it was a Xmas gift to me in 1976, when I was 13, and that it remains one of the top 10 presents I ever received in my life.

It was a Polaroid, probably a Colorpack model. It was a solid body, with no parts that popped up or unfolded, and the film fit into the back and the photos came out the side.

Polaroid Colorpack Camera (image borrowed from camerapedia.wikia.com) Not exactly like the one I had, but similar.

I remember there were very few exposures in a single box of film, maybe only 8 or 10, and that a box of film cost in the range of $9 or $10. Which was a fortune to me at the time. I didn’t get an allowance, and finding a job was (for various reasons I won’t get into) not possible.

The shots I took with that camera are mostly of family and friends from 1976 and 1980. They are either over-exposed or under-exposed, mostly candid, a few posed. There’s nothing about any of them that is particularly creative, innovative, or even clever. I didn’t know anything about composition, lighting, or photo manipulation at the time and film was too expensive for me to risk playing around for fear of messing it up.  I was just tickled to be able to take photos at all.

I loved that camera but rarely had any film for it.

I got my next camera in the early 1980s. It was a free 35mm Kodak that came with a magazine subscription. And I only subscribed to the magazine, really, to get the free camera. By that time, I had a husband and a child, and soon a second child, then a third, so the majority of the photos I took were of my children. Even though money was tight, we could justify the expense of film and development, especially for birthdays and holidays and vacations and trips to the zoo, and the majority of photos were of those sorts of family events.

Of course, I still didn’t know anything about ‘photography.’ I wanted to learn, but this was still long before the internet or Google and I had my hands full with 3 little kids and my own inner demons and various other life issues. It just never happened.

I used the heck out of that little 35mm Kodak, and the similar inexpensive 35mms that followed, all through the 1980s and 1990s. I documented almost everything about our family history and the results are filed by year in 8 large shoebox-sized boxes.

Then, sometime early in the 2000s, we got our first digital camera.

And that’s where I’ll take up the story next Tuesday.