I’d had a camera of my own before - for a short while: a bottom-model Instamatic a paper-towel company (and likely also Kodak) was giving away for proof-of-purchase seals from rolls of paper towels plus a nominal postage fee.  But I very soon moved up to a really-good rangefinder 35mm camera as my parents’ incentive for placing near the top in a Scout troop’s competition.
   I’d had my eyes on a mid-range Instamatic with auto-winding and also having photocell like my mother’s that she still occasionally used instead of her SLR -but they were more practical.  They “suggested” me towards a rangefinder 35mm - either Konica like her SLRor (when the Konica had to be returned due to malfunctions) a Minolta Hi-Matic 7S.
   They saw a need for even hobbies that would eventually potentially pay - as opportunity even then in the early 1970s was vanishing, and my father had just been dumped as a professor, despite teaching a field short of faculty and his having three graduate degrees in three math-oriented areas few studied.  So my reward would be that camera - not the typical kid stuff like go-karts or minibikes.
   That camera was light-years above the giveaway Instamatic - with a fast f/1.8 lens, a photocell, and settable for any film speed from 25 to 800.  Readout in viewfinder told EVnumber - then settable on lens with calculator scale built in - a huge step up from any Instamatic.  Shutter speed was up to 1/500.  Sure, the lens was fixed and wide-angle at 45mm - but took filters easily, and I came to keep an UV filter screwed in for protection at all times.
   I quickly graduated to developing black and white film myself in various home darkrooms - and then enlarging the negatives.
   That’s the camera I shot the first news photo I sold with - a wrecked small plane at the tiny local airport, I heard it on scanner, went, shot photos - sold the film to area daily.  Area daily ran it next day with credit.  Plane sustained $250,000 damage; I got paid $30.  I was in college then - and hooked on photojournalism.