CHANGING TIMES

ON THE 15TH OF March in 1982, a recently-graduated high-school teacher walked into a set of small, non-descript offices in Brookvale – on Sydney’s northern beaches – to begin a new career. The prospects of a job in the state’s education system had looked grim, so the newspaper ad seeking a cadet journalist with a keen interest in photography presented a more promising alternative.

A few weeks earlier I’d attended an interview – coaxing my cantankerous 1963 Mini 850 all the way from the deep south of Cronulla – where all those years of reading Amateur Photography while at high school in the UK paid off. When, much later, I was given my confidential application form it was marked at the top “Highly possible” and, alongside the appraisal for Photographic Knowledge was written “Excellent”. AP’s weekly publication was a drain on meagre pocket money resources – there was Motor and Autocar to buy as well (both weeklies too) – but 35 years on, it’s looking like a pretty good investment. Thirty-five years! It’s gone in a flash, I can tell you.

Back then this magazine was called Camera Craft and the lead time was around six weeks, so I didn’t actually first appear in print until the May 1982 issue. Being untried, I was only let loose on a few accessories and a slide projector, but by the time the June 1982 issue came out I’d graduated and my first camera test was the Minolta X-700. The X-700 was a milestone for Minolta too, being its first high-end 35mm SLR with a polycarbonate bodyshell and programmed exposure control plus it introduced a new logo on the faceplate. It subsequently became our second winner of the Australian Camera Of The Year award which had been introduced the year before and, of course, is still running as the expanded Camera Magazine Imaging Awards.

The 35mm SLR was the weapon of choice for enthusiasts back then and this was reflected in many of the ads which appeared in the May 1982 issue – for the Praktica B200, Pentax LX, Cosina CT7, Canon AE-1 Program, Chinon CE-4, Minolta XG-M, Leica R4, Nikon FE and F3 plus 35mm accessory lenses from Vivitar, Makinon and Cimko. Many of these brands are now long gone and many more have disappeared over the last 35 years, including Agfa, Bronica, Contax, Konica, Polaroid (the original), Kodak (the original again), Hanimex, Petri, Yashica, Zenit and most recently, to all intents and purposes, Mamiya. Autofocusing effected the first cull – the investment required to be competitive just too much – and, a decade or so later, digital imaging’s huge financial demands accounted for any struggling survivors. But there have been some great revivals too – most notably Olympus and Fujifilm – and newcomers such as Panasonic, Sony, GoPro and Phase One.

Not surprisingly then, the one word that sums up the last 35 years in the photography industry is “change”. Back in 1982 fully-auto exposure control was the big deal, but we were already looking forward to autofocusing – that ad for the AE-1 Program included an autofocus 35-70mm zoom with built-in active rangefinder, motor and batteries – the fully-integrated camera (eliminating clunky add-ons) and even electronic imaging via still-video systems. Still-video was short-lived, but around long enough to convince everybody the future was filmless. Meanwhile, film had been trying to become more accessible, first with Disc – ahead of its time – and then the original APS – too little, way too late. Digital capture arrived as a work-in-progress and it took well over a decade for it to get close to film’s picture quality, but the panic set in early among the camera makers, so photo-chemical imaging died a premature death. I still maintain that the theory of any new technology is always nearly ten years ahead of a truly workable practice.

But change is what’s made the last 35 years exciting, fascinating, absorbing, sometimes perplexing and, on more than a few occasions, challenging… especially when trying to predict the future. Essentially, the 150+ years of photography has been all about designing more compact, convenient and capable cameras – it’s driving the mirrorless revolution right now – making photography more accessible to everybody. It’s ironic that the most successful device in this quest is not even a camera, but every smartphone user is a potential convert which perhaps should be an industry-wide strategy to ensure it’s not just the digital compact camera that’s a casualty. There is, however, plenty to be optimistic about such as action cams, camera drones, mirrorless in all its various interpretations and the video/still convergence, but also the return to the traditional camera store (both online and on-street) and the firts stirrings of a real film revival.

“May you live in interesting times” is famous for being a Chinese curse, but the interesting times that have been my 35 years with this magazine – so far – have been nothing but a blessing. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the unwavering support over all this time of Jim Preece, who joined just a few months after me as advertising sales manager and is now head of the divisional group in Next Media to which Camera belongs. He has always championed the value of editorial integrity and independence, and that makes an editor’s job a thousand times easier. It’s also ensured Camera’s reputation as a respected source of accurate and unbiased information – culminating in our admission, in 2010, to the prestigious Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) global group of photography magazines – something that’s now even more valuable in this era of so-called ‘digital influencers’ whose affiliations are often undisclosed.

Finally, many thanks to you, Camera readers, a few of whom, I know, have been with me since 1982. Without you we wouldn’t have a magazine, so I’m as committed as ever to making sure we help guide you through photography’s ever-changing landscape en route to ever-better pictures.

Paul Burrows, Editor