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LETTER OF THE WEEK WINS A SAMSUNG EVO PLUS M CROSD CARD NOTE: PR ZE APPL ES TO UK AND EU RES DENTS ONLY YOUR LETTERS Contact Amateur Photographer, TI Media Limited, Pinehurst 2, Pinehurst Road, Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 7BF Email ap@ti-media.com Subscriptions Enquiries and orders email help@magazinesdirect.com Telephone 0330 333 1113 Overseas +44 330 1113 (lines open Mon-Fri GMT 8.30am-5.30pm excluding bank holidays) One year (51 issues) UK £155.50; Europe e 259; USA $338.99; Rest of World £221.99 Test Reports Contact OTC for copies of AP test reports. Telephone 01707 273 773 Back Issues Contact 01795 662976; support@mags-uk.com Advertising Email samuel.shaw@ti-media.com Inserts Call Mona Amarasakera, Canopy Media, on 0203 148 3710 Editorial team Group Editor Nigel Atherton Deputy Editor Geoff Harris Technical Editor Andy Westlake Reviews Editor Michael Topham Features Editor Amy Davies Technique Editor Hollie Latham Hucker Production Editor Jacqueline Porter Chief Sub Editor/Features Jolene Menezes Acting Chief Sub/Features Amanda Stroud Art Editor Sarah Foster Senior Designer Steph Tebboth Studio Manager Andrew Sydenham Photo-Science Consultant Professor Robert Newman Offi ce Manager Hollie Bishop Special thanks to The moderators of the AP website: Andrew Robertson, lisadb, Nick Roberts, The Fat Controller Advertising Head of Market Liz Reid 07949 179 200 Senior Account Manager Samuel Shaw 07970 615 618 Production Coordinator Chris Gozzett 0203 148 2694 Publishing team Chief Executive Offi cer Marcus Rich Group Managing Director Adrian Hughes Managing Director Kirsty Setchell

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LETTER OF THE WEEK

Wild about Harry

I’ve been a subscriber for many years and look forward to each issue. I enjoy reading all the articles, but often one stands out as something special and among those When Harry Met... is always among the best. When Harry Met the Spice Girls (AP 15 February) was extra special. A bit of history, a good description of the girls themselves that showed their characters, an insight into the working life of the photographer, lessons in how to set up a shoot and get the best out of the subjects. And at the end a great description of how all the elements of composition and lighting came together to make a really special image. It’s an article I’m sure no one could fail to enjoy and learn something from. Simon Warren

Win! A Samsung 64GB EVO Plus microSDXC with SD adapter Class 10 UHS-1 Grade U3 memory card supports 4K UHD. Offering R/W speeds of up to 100MB/s /60MB/s and a 10-year limited warranty. www.samsung.com/uk/memory-cards.

Who’s the ‘sparkling character’?

I believe that the gentleman in the straw hat pictured on the front cover of the February 1959 issue of Amateur Photographer ( Back in the day, 8 February) is Walt Disney, creator of the legendary cartoon character Mickey Mouse. Douglas Thomson

That’s a great suggestion Douglas, but having studied a few pictures of Walt we don’t think it is him. You did, however inspire us to try to fi nd his real identity and our resident super-sleuth Amanda has, I believe, solved the mystery. He appears to be the actor Alan Dudley, who starred in a string of West End musicals including The Boyfriend and My Fair Lady (where he was Stanley Holloway’s understudy).

We reckon we’ve worked out who this cover star was

Among his many fi lm and TV credits was a part in Chariots of Fire . He passed away in 2013.

Open windows Few people seem to have a good word for Windows 10, and everyone seems to praise iOS. But Microsoft bends over backwards to accommodate older software. I know someone who recently upgraded to Windows 10, and was delighted to fi nd that he was able to install and run his paid-for copy of Photoshop 6. My copy of Lightroom 5 also runs well on the current version of Windows 10. If you can’t run your favourite version of Lightroom/Photoshop on iOS, then perhaps Microsoft could be your saviour?Although in all honesty, I now rarely use my aging copy of Lightroom, because I have upgraded to ON1’s Photo Raw, and I have never had any reason to regret doing so. David Price

Flickr pricing I have over 30,00 photos on Flickr Pro. I see that Flickr intends to raise the subscription to £55.88 per year ( News , 8 February). I have been on Flickr Pro since 2007 and I only paid £36.04 for a two-year subscription in 2018. Prior to that it was £27.53 for the two previous two-year periods. How can SmugMug, which owns Flickr, justify this? Ian Pratt

Pentax hits the spot Around two years ago I sold my Pentax Spotmatic F, which I regretted as the quality of the SMC Takumar lens was excellent. I’d given up hope of fi nding another one but while visiting a charity shop recently I was thrilled to discover not only a Spotmatic F but also 35mm f/2 and 135mm SMC Takumar lenses, plus minor accessories, for £75. I purchased the lot, and I gave a cash donation. I’ve sourced an M9 adapter from the Small Battery Company, to replace the obsolete 625 cell. The Spotmatic is a joy to use and I’m delighted to own one again. Pat Whelen

Aff ecting image The most affecting picture I have ever seen. Across pages 26 and 27 in your interview with Tom Stoddart ( Golden Era , 15 February), as the caption puts it ‘a well-nourished man takes maize from a starving child’. I won’t be able to sleep tonight, that image will fi ll the darkness. Well done Tom Stoddart. I just wish the situation hadn’t been there for the taking. Bill Winward

Ticking all the boxes I much enjoyed Adrian Gray’s article on box cameras ( Boxing Clever, 22 February). Perhaps I could add a couple of points: First, up to about the 1930s, cameras with meniscus or doublet (i.e. non-colour corrected) lenses were focused on the UV image, as that is what black & white fi lms were sensitive to. Today that means they are focused further away than they should be. Secondly, the very common Kodak 620 Brownie cameras take

620 fi lm, which is similar to 120, but is now no longer available. Hence, I would recommend the (Post-war, 120) Coronet Consul he shows, and other very similar Coronets. Carry on with the black tape, as the hinged cover over the red window is inadequate, and allows slight fogging with black & white fi lm, or reddish fogging with colour. However, I think that exposure numbers on the negatives arise from the fi lm being undeveloped for a long time. David Bowater ...and more Just when I had begun thinking that AP had gone much too upmarket for my taste, you go and print an interesting article on the humble box camera. I shall cut out and keep Adrian Gray’s excellent article, Boxing Clever. Something that the box camera gave us was images taken from a lower level than is common nowadays. Almost all handheld pictures taken with smartphones and compact cameras are taken at head height, thus giving an adult’s view of the world. But the box camera with its Albada viewfi nder must be held at the waist and thereby makes a picture from a much lower level, just the way a child would view the world. This adds a certain charm to the pictures, don’t you think? I regularly use digital cameras that have an all-moving screen; I deliberately use this type of camera because I can fi re the shutter at waist height, thus giving a similar view to a box camera. I have three such cameras –a Canon PowerShot A630, a Pentax Optio 750Z and a Nikon Coolpix 5700. And yes I even own a box camera as well: an Agfa Clack from circa 1955. John Woodgate Bridge question After reading your excellent and informative magazine on and off for many years, I eventually signed up for a two-year subscription at Christmas, as my nearest newsagent, six miles away, kept running out of them. Now I wait for the Saturday post instead, which is great. Working as a lowly groundsman on an large country estate I read the reports on camera bodies and lenses costing £5,000, £10,000 and more. I currently use a Fujifi lm X-S1, bought eight years ago for £550. If money was not a problem I would have a Fujifi lm X-T3, X-Pro3, a Sony Alpha 7R IV or perhaps even a Fujifi lm GFX100, with a selection of lenses to cover what my bridge camera can do –but not up to your pro-standards. I would like to know if the Sony RX10 1V is worth the money or would you recommend something else? I still use medium-format fi lm occasionally, with a Fujifi lm GF670, 670w and GX617 but it is a hassle with the processing, so I’m thinking of selling those and getting something digital. Tim Patrick The Sony RX10 IV is probably the fi nest bridge camera you can buy, but you won’t get a lot of change out of £1,700. It’s a great all-in-one solution with a superb zoom, but if you really hanker after a Fujifi lm X-T3 or Sony A7R IV and can live without the long end of your zoom, why not consider getting one of the older models second-hand? You could buy a Fujifi lm X-T1 and 18-55mm lens for under £500, for example. Or you could buy one of those and a used Sony RX10 Mark III (still a fi ne bridge camera) and have the best of both worlds for little over £1,000. Pat Whelen finds the Pentax Spotmatic F a joy to use

The Sony RX10 IV bridge camera Enter the code below via Photocrowd to get one free entry to Round One –Points of View APOY34630681 YOUR FREE ENTRY CODE

Back in the day

A wander through the AP archive. This week we pay a visit to March 1934

1934

WELCOME to the ‘Spring and Empire Number’ 1934, a bumper-sized issue in which the colonies get to enjoy the limelight. First, the results of the annual AP Overseas and Colonial Competition. The award for best collective entry went to the Johannesburg Photographic Society. Runners-up included the Camera Pictorialists of Bombay, Poona Camera Art Circle and Dunedin Photographic Society of New Zealand. One of the Silver Plaque winners, JN Unwalla of Bombay, was given the coveted weekly How I make my Exhibition Pictures spot, which included a fi ne portrait of a lady called Roda (below). Also in this issue, an evocative illustrated feature on the challenges of photography in the heat of colonial India: Photography Out East –Ice, Mosquitoes and Snakes, for Successful Development by WC Fox. ‘Developing was done at night,’ he explained, ‘to the steady whine of hunting mosquitoes, and mysterious rustlings, scuffl ings and squeaks from the roof, where snakes, mongoose and rats played a deadly hide-and-seek.’