Asahi Camera

Asahi Camera attempted to satisfy interests in all areas of photography, with short portfolios in monochrome and color by established and new photographers (most but not all of them Japanese), contests for readers, articles about technique, and (accounting for much of the magazine's bulk) news and tests of equipment.

Even if one considers only its uninterrupted years of publication, from 1949, Asahi Camera was the oldest surviving Japanese photography magazine.

Like any magazine that attempts to satisfy people with very different interests, it was sometimes criticized for not serving any of them particularly well, but its equipment reviews appeared to be as rigorous as any and it continued to attract some of the best photographers for its portfolios.

Like many photographic magazines, many of its covers somehow happened to show conventionally attractive young women (sometimes nude), and the overall impression it gave was unadventurous, but daring was a rare commodity in the Japanese magazine market and Asahi Camera did display work that cannot be regarded as at all commercial.

A shortened version, Asahi Camera, continued as an alternative title until late in the twentieth century but then was written "ASAHICAMERA".