SLR Camera Magazine

[antonyg]

I have a three year set of the "SLR Camera" Magazine (1967-70), plus their SLR Yearbook 1971. Does anyone know how long this publication lasted, and who were the captive readerships ?. Anyway with the Annuals I have, there is a delightful sense of everything was possible with the new mass market. The adverts are priceless, and the best possible history source. I looked at E bay, and it appears the magazine extended into the end of the 1970's, by which time the magazine competition must have been intense. My wish is to get the years 1972-1975. Theres the Canon EF, and Nikkormat FT2 to marvel at !

Any news update and remembrances of this particular publication ?

[Jeff Kubach]

I don't know anything about the magazine, but I love to look through it. I bet there is a lot of history in those pages.

Jeff

[grahamp]

Sounds like the UK publication from the dates. It ran on into the late 70's at least, then got rolled into another publication when the photography magazine market contracted around 1980 of so. It was an SLR specialist magazine, mostly 35mm with some rollfilm equipment. It had a good technical bias as I remember. That might have been what killed it 8-)

[antonyg]

Sounds like the UK publication from the dates. It ran on into the late 70's at least, then got rolled into another publication when the photography magazine market contracted around 1980 of so. It was an SLR specialist magazine, mostly 35mm with some rollfilm equipment. It had a good technical bias as I remember. That might have been what killed it 8-)

Interesting point you make about the photography market contracting. Do you know what caused this to happen ?

[Trevor Crone]

What I remember of it, it was a great little mag. I should have the odd copy laying around somewhere.

The '70's to late '80's had a large number of photography mags. and I feel just too many for the market to sustain them all. One of my favourites from that era was 'Camera User' which latter became just 'Camera'.

[antonyg]

I have now got a few 1975 magazines. I find the adverts are for the cameras the same as for the early 70's, Canon EF, Minolta SRT101, Yashica Electro X etc. It would seem the market was quiet, before the 1976 revolution, Canon AE1, Pentax ME etc

[Ian Grant]

Have to agree Trevor, when I first bought Camera User it was awful. Then suddenly the last few months it was very good, but when it emerged from it's chrysalis as Camera it was exceedingly good, and consistently so. Another good magazine was Photo Technique which eventually merged with Camera.

The quality of the articles was very high, as well as the photography shown, test reports pulled no punches and were accurate, particularly the lens reports.

I looked at SLR magazine but was never impressed.

Ian

[grahamp]

Photography was definitely 'in' during the mid-70's. Lots of magazines, lots of Arts Council funding. Creative Camera was interesting then - one of the few publications in my collection to have stayed with me when I moved to California.

I think the general interest magazines were hit by the microprocessor arrival. Personal computers really took off in the early 80s, and that probably attracted a lot of people who had a gadget fascination. Now the serious programming (leaving out Usenix' ;login, ACCU's Overload, and other non-newstand publications) and computer hobbyist magazines are giving way to gaming.

Fashion, I think.

[Phippo55]

Hello,
Ive just dug out some old SLR camera magazines of my dads. They are dated between 1973 and 1976 and there are 35 of them. I just wondered if you would be interested in purchasing them as I found this thread when googling the title of the magazine?
Kind Regards, Emma.

[Removed Account2]

I understood something had happened when I discovered that Modern Photography had merged with Popular Photography, something that was unthinkable in the early 1970's

I had shelves full of those magazines, for a long spell 35mm Camera (USA) was my favorite with a lot od daring pictures from US subcultures.....

Now about 5 house moves later those magazines are gone!