Gear nostalgia part one - Porst Reflex

Many of us has used film SLRs before the advent of digital photography. This is the first chapter in a little nostalgia trip, describing cameras I have used from the mid-70s to todays DSLRs.
My first SLR, which I bought as a 16 year old boy, obsessed by photography, was a Porst Reflex, made in East Germany. It came in an very affordable package with a 35 F3.5, a 50 F2.8 and a 135 F2.8 lens. Of these, only the 50 had an automatic aperture, while the 35 and 135 had a pre-set aperture that had to be closed down by hand. The 50 had a robust metal construction, the other lenses plastic. The lens mount was the then very popular M42 screw mount.
One odd detail was the exposure meter. It did not measure through the lens, it was positioned in a small window on the camera body, to the right of the prism housing. Since it was a Selen-meter, it didnt need any battery. A scale showed all the possible shutter time/aperture combinations at the actual light level. In that way it was very pedagogic, if not very convinient or reliable.
The finish was rough, and the shutter/mirror action was very loud. The lenses were so-so. It was really not a good camera, but as a tool for learning it filled its purpose.

The Isar river in Munich. Porst Reflex, with the 35 F3.5 lens:

I began to enviously look at the much more well made japanese cameras. This was a classic golden age for SLRs, with cameras like Pentax Spotmatic, Olympus OM-1, Canon Ftb, Minolta SRT-series, Nikkormats and many more. The magazine Modern Photography became my favourite reading. I enjoyed the writing style of Herbert Keppler and the ambitious tests of cameras and lenses.
I finally found a candidate that was affordable, but still way ahead of the Porst in finish and build quality. I took my savings and a huge loss in trade in value for the Porst system and bought a Yashica SLR. Continued in next chapter.