Amateur Photographer - UK (2021-03-06)

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Nigel Atherton looks back at past AP issues

AP’S THIRD annual Empire Number featured a full-bleed

cover image (a rarity for the time) depicting the view

across Blackfriars Bridge, London. It shows horse-drawn

carriages, an Edwardian double decker bus and, on the

skyline, the faint outline of St Paul’s Cathedral. This was

pretty much the view from the AP ofce from 1972 to

2008 when we were based at King’s Reach Tower,

although rush hour looked somewhat different by then.

Inside, beneath a masthead of banners listing Britain’s

colonial outposts, the Editor FJ Mortimer welcomed its

international readers. ‘The great popularity of The AP and

PN in our Colonies is well evidenced by the steadily

increasing number of communications received daily from

readers in all parts of the world,’ he wrote. In How to

Succeed with a Hand Camera, the author argued: ‘A

negative measuring 3 ½ x 2 ½ in. or smaller can include

just as much as a half plate, and thanks to the excellence

of modern anastigmats, the detail of the tiny negative is

so sharp and well dened that the subject will stand

enlargement to an almost unbelievable extent.’ The

Latest’s round-up of ‘recent apparatus’ included the ‘Chic’

Reex camera, claimed to be the cheapest reex camera

on the market at £2 2s (£250) or an extra 7s 6d (£45)

with a variable shutter. The Junior Multi-Speed Shutter

could be tted to most lenses and offered speeds from

1/500sec to 1/2sec for £3 12s 6d (£430) and the

‘Folding Ensign’ roll lm camera came in three variants

from 37s 6d (£225) down to 21s (£125).

Editor FJ Mortimer welcomed readers in the colonies to the 1912 Empire Number

Tips for using folding handheld cameras A guide to photographing cloudscapes

‘Reviews of some of the recent apparatus submitted to us for notice’

From the archive

11 March 1912

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