From the archive

This week Nigel Atherton sets the AP time machine on a course for August 1967

23 August 1967

WE’VE done some great covers and some terrible ones over our 136 years, but this shot by Rod Edwards, is one of our better efforts. (See Inbox, page 22). The editorlal section comprised 36 pages that were stapled into the middle of an 84-page ad section. In his opening welcome, Editor Reg Mason recounts the tale of a photographer imprisoned in East Germany who made a camera out of cardboard, with a lens made from an electric light bulb

lled with boiled water and sealed with a candle stump. He then re-sensitised some discarded radiography lm by soaking it in urine, and made a 45-minute exposure from his cell window which he then developed in a salt solution. It’s amazing the lengths some people will go to when the only available alternative is a Praktica. (Joke!)

Rayment Kirby took some arty nude and glamour shots on the beach with his Yashica 635. ‘A photographic holiday in Southampton’ continued the coastal theme, although many readers may have preferred to win the two-week holiday to Japan offered as a competition prize to buyers of a Minolta SR T101 who then submit four photos taken on it, illustrating the theme of ‘Life in Britain’. The trip included a tour of the Minolta factory. The SR T101 wasn’t cheap though: with the 55mm f/1.7 Rokkor it cost the equivalent of £2,250 in today’s money.

Ads for the Halina Super 8 Cine camera and the ‘remarkable’ Canon Canonet QL range, whose four models cost the current equivalent of £751 to £1,127

Rayment Kirby takes actress Mollie Peters down to the beach to show just what can be done with ‘the combination of a pretty girl, the sun and the sea...’

A tempting prize for Minolta buyers

Exa targets the niche flasher market