I've thought this was quite an obvious call way back when I first saw it in the BBC Series ' The Planets '

It's not much, but imho, it IS a picture and deserves mention whenever one talks about the first picture from mars - even if VL1 was the first to do it properly.

I did a recent talk to the Instruments and Imaging section of the British Asto Assoc ( www.britastro.org ) entitled '33 Cameras, Our Eyes on Mars' - and I felt it necessary to talk about Mars 3 and decided it counted as 'Camera 0'

(The other 33 were VL x2, x2. MPF x 2, Soj x 3, MGS x 2, MO, MEX, and MER x2, x10..yes yes, lots left out, some cameras counted as 1 when they're 2 or 2 when they're one, but it was a nice number ;) )

Doug