Old photography magazines

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Chris
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Clearing out my fathers shed this week - full of junk - or things he would say ‘might come in handy’ - and came across a couple of magazines from the late seventies and early eighties. No photoshop (maybe some darkroom trickery but no computers involved). Very different to the magazines of today - does everyone else have a collection of old mags about the place? (Photography ones)

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In my loft I have a box full of them. I also have a box of the CD-ROMs they stuck on the front. I had a huge amount but I found someone who wanted them and I was loathe to bin them.
 
I scanned several dozen issues dating from the 1950s to the early 1970s then recycled the paper. Can be quite interesting looking throught them.
 
Camera magazine was head and shoulders above the competition at the time. It was the one many photographers aspired to have a portfolio published in.
 
Camera magazine was head and shoulders above the competition at the time. It was the one many photographers aspired to have a portfolio published in.

Nice to hear, but while Camera magazine had a committed and enthusiastic audience it was never a commercial success. It was deliberately pitched at the higher-end, above its sister magazine Practical Photography, but Camera always struggled to reach a viable circulation level and never made any money.

I was editor from 1979-82, before moving to the more mainstream Practical Photography that was extremely profitable, ultimately becoming the biggest selling photo magazine in Europe. Sadly, circulations of all printed magazines today are a faint shadow of what they once were.
 
Nice to hear, but while Camera magazine had a committed and enthusiastic audience it was never a commercial success. It was deliberately pitched at the higher-end, above its sister magazine Practical Photography, but Camera always struggled to reach a viable circulation level and never made any money.

I was editor from 1979-82, before moving to the more mainstream Practical Photography that was extremely profitable, ultimately becoming the biggest selling photo magazine in Europe. Sadly, circulations of all printed magazines today are a faint shadow of what they once were.

I realise that. I had every issue of Camera and was featured in it after it became Creative Photography. You would have to have paid me to read Practical Photography.

In those days it was:

BJP for job postings
AP for the classifieds
Camera for photography
 
I don't think I have any printed copies older than 10 years, but I've downloaded some very old photo magazines from Archive.org I think there may have been a few from before 1900.
 
I think the oldest printed magazines I have are a couple of bound volumes of Miniature Camera magazine and some loose copies of the same from 1938-1939, including the last one from peacetime and the first after war was declared. After that, a copy of Practical Photography from 1963 (I think), bound copies of Photo Technique from the early 1970s and many copies of Practical Photography and Camera User from the same era.

Like Mike above I also have several pdf versions of older magazines from archive.org.
 
I had some copies of Amateur Photographer and Practical Photography from the 60s and early 70s but threw them out during one of our house moves. Never missed them at all, unlike a few other things that I should have kept, but alas...
 
I have a few years worth of Professional Photographer magazines taking up space and wonder if anyone knows of anyone that might buy them? There are individual copies for sale on eBay but would rather sell on as a job lot. TIA
 
Clearing out my fathers shed this week - full of junk - or things he would say ‘might come in handy’ - and came across a couple of magazines from the late seventies and early eighties. No photoshop (maybe some darkroom trickery but no computers involved). Very different to the magazines of today - does everyone else have a collection of old mags about the place? (Photography ones)

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I remember buying similar magazines, usually the Amateur Photographer ones or similar magazines like that. What I loved was those kind of "in the bag" series (I think two different magazines did similar series), where they would show what kind of gear other photographers (ie Photojournalist, landscape photographer, wedding photographer, etc., etc.,) have. Often showing the cameras, lenses, flashguns, and most of the equipment, out in the open, around a bag.
 
I keep nothing older than 2 years, but I still have subscriptions for PP and Digital Camera and sometimes wonder why....

Those I discard I scan the most interesting bits (such as Viewpoints/Locations in OP) and save the PDFs to a small drive.
 
My dad used to get AP when I was a teenager, in the 70's, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed that magazine...
I took AP on subscription for a year or so recently and enjoyed it, but after Roger Hicks died there was even less I liked to read each week so it didn't seem worth continuing the sub. I get PP as a freebie subscription with my bank account. The only magazine I've actually held onto copies of is Black & White Photography.
 
It's the adverts I like in old camera magazines, the sheer number of them in an early 80s Amateur Photographer Magazine is staggering by today's standards... all those camera shops, it seemed virtually every town had at least two or three at one time!
 
I've got my index of digital copies handy, so I see I have:
'Camera Craft' from 1901
'Amateur Photographer issue 1' from 1885 and
'Photographic & fine art journal' from 1855
 
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