I was a casual snapshooter as long as I can remember. Around 1969 I had a friend, Peter Moncure, who was into photography sufficiently to have a darkroom, and I began to be mildly interested in it. Then one day my girlfriend brought home a broken Kodak 35 she had bought for $5.00. I had a general understanding of how cameras worked, and thought I might be able to fix it, so I took it apart.

Figuring out how to get it apart was the biggest challenge. I soon found that this was typical, and in general, the hard part of camera repair is figuring out how to get 'em apart and back together. The actual repairs are not usually all that difficult.

If memory serves, the problem was that one of the rangefinde mirrors had come loose. I was able to re-secure it and get it adjusted so it would give proper focus. I started taking pictures with it and soon acquired a cheap enlarger and adapted the bathroom of my apartment to be able to serve as a darkroom.

I soon got seriously hooked, shooting black and white (all I could afford) and bulk-loading my own film cartridges.

The Kodak 35 was kinda cheesy in construction, and slow and clunky to operate (had a separate eyepiece for the rangefinder than for the viewfinder) but it had a decent lens, and could give good results when there was enough light.