The Miniature Camera Monthly

Above: Cover photo of the August 1939 issue of Ray Bolger for it’s feature article on the new about-to-be-released movie The Wizard of Oz

My wife retired a couple years ago. I’ve been winding down my freelance career. With no real reason to live where we do beyond our former careers, we decided recently to move to another state to live closer to the kids and grandkids.

We’ve been going total ‘Marie Kondo’ on our house to get ready for the move and have been giving away and throwing away years of accumulated objects we see no reason to move.

I’ve always used an antique steel and glass ‘dental’ cabinet to house and display many of my old cameras. I kept a couple old photo books in the cabinet as well. While packing up I looked at them for the first time in too long. I have had them so long I don’t remember where they came from.

One book is a bound collection of the March to November issues of Minicam magazine from 1939. I opened it up and as they say, I went down the rabbit hole. Filled with a variety of how-to articles it also reflected the last pre-war months. What I found most interesting though were the ads. All those now 85+ year old cameras were the newest and latest marvels.

Minicam “The Miniature Camera Monthly” launched in Sept. 1937 and and ran for 12 years. Minicam was devoted to what was then considered the amateur 35mm “miniature” camera format. Rebranded as Minicam Photography in 1940 it became Modern Photography Magazine in 1949 and lasted another 40 years. Its subscriber list was then taken over by rival Popular Photography

Minicam stated aim was to educate amateur photographers on techniques, equipment, and taking better pictures by featuring technical advice, darkroom tips, and it even included photo related comic strips in early issues. It entered the market just a few months after the launch, also in 1937, of Popular Photography. The two publications remained fiercely competitive rivals.

These old issues feel like a valuable, historic resource for photography, and offer a fun window into the pre-war 20th-century camera culture.

There are ads for chemicals and enlargers and flashes and everything photographic. There were so many cameras that I’ve never seen or even knew existed. They also have charts of gear comparisons and charts of ‘Salons’ to submit ones work. And when you take the listed prices of gear, they translate pretty close to today’s prices adjusted for inflation.

Here are some of the pages I copied out of the compendium. If you want to read some of the details you might need a larger screen than your phone. With an average of 150 pages per issue there’s a lot to see.

Share this post: