I started doing photography in the mid-1970s with my grandfather's Argus gear. He passed away in 1968 so the gear had sat unused for a while. He had two C44s one of which was the version with the winding lever. There was one of the old "bricks" with the beige leatherette but I never used that one. In addition to the Argus 50mm f/2.8 he had the German-made 35mm and 100mm lenses which are gorgeous to look at. He had multiple Argus light meters, the hotshoe turret veiwfinder and even an Argus slide projector (which still functions). Most of the images I made as a child were poor but a few were remarkably good....purely by accident I'm sure. My grandfather's slides and B&W prints from these cameras are quite good for that day and age. I have continued in the hobby and have been a Nikon user since the mid 1980s. I shoot digital 99.9% of the time but recently bought some film for my old Nikon manual focus gear. Just this week I pulled all the Argus gear out. The C-44R does not work. Shutter either sticks or does not fire. The plain C-44 seems to work fine. The glass on all the lenses looks great. The viewfinders are far from bright but work. The turret viewfinder is also a little cloudy but aligns pretty well. I would agree with others that these are not and never were fine cameras. But they were decent cameras at far lower prices than Leica. Some current reviewers of the C-44 models complain about how hard it is to change lenses. To the one they failed to read the instructions. Changing lenses is quick and easy if you know what you're doing. I'm going to load the functioning C-44 with some Harman Phoenix 200 film and use an iPhone light meter app. I'm hoping for vintage looking images and I think the Argus will deliver and it will be fun.
Wow, so cool. I now have two C-fours and love them. I have just put a roll of film through each and will see how well the rengefinder has held up. Truly proud that America had a high quality camera of it own back in the day. ❤
Goodness...This promo goes back many years. The sound kind of reminds me of the newsreels we would see before the movies, in the 50s! Nostalgia...love it.
An interesting video, but there is no Argus product which could rationally be extended the adjective of "fine". Argus cameras were fairly simply designed and constructed. They never delivered images which were in a class with the high quality cameras and lenses of their day. Whether Argus could have built a better camera might be debated, but they targeted a middle class market in the post-war US and built to the economic capacity of that market. I remember that when I took school photography around 1961, several students used Argus C-3 models. Their distinctive aspect was that since Argus used oiled sleeves where others used bearings, there was a continuing flow of metal dust being cast off from the moving surfaces. Note in the video that Argus displays a three-element triplet as the referenced lens, whereas the four element Tessar or its copy was by then the minimum standard of reference for quality 35mm photography. The one thing you can give to Argus is that they were reputed to be the first company to use computer aided lens design when they built a new 50mm 2.8 standard lens for the C-33/C-44 models, done in conjunction with the University of Michigan.
Idk my post-war a2b is my favorite little piece of history. I got it for cheap in working condition as a fun little project to fix and then use and I love it. Bonus points is that ann arbor where they were manufactured is about 20 minutes from where I live and have lived for all my life so some michigan history is fun.
I started doing photography in the mid-1970s with my grandfather's Argus gear. He passed away in 1968 so the gear had sat unused for a while. He had two C44s one of which was the version with the winding lever. There was one of the old "bricks" with the beige leatherette but I never used that one. In addition to the Argus 50mm f/2.8 he had the German-made 35mm and 100mm lenses which are gorgeous to look at. He had multiple Argus light meters, the hotshoe turret veiwfinder and even an Argus slide projector (which still functions).
Most of the images I made as a child were poor but a few were remarkably good....purely by accident I'm sure. My grandfather's slides and B&W prints from these cameras are quite good for that day and age.
I have continued in the hobby and have been a Nikon user since the mid 1980s. I shoot digital 99.9% of the time but recently bought some film for my old Nikon manual focus gear.
Just this week I pulled all the Argus gear out. The C-44R does not work. Shutter either sticks or does not fire. The plain C-44 seems to work fine. The glass on all the lenses looks great. The viewfinders are far from bright but work. The turret viewfinder is also a little cloudy but aligns pretty well.
I would agree with others that these are not and never were fine cameras. But they were decent cameras at far lower prices than Leica.
Some current reviewers of the C-44 models complain about how hard it is to change lenses. To the one they failed to read the instructions. Changing lenses is quick and easy if you know what you're doing.
I'm going to load the functioning C-44 with some Harman Phoenix 200 film and use an iPhone light meter app. I'm hoping for vintage looking images and I think the Argus will deliver and it will be fun.
Just developed the first roll from my Argus C3 and was blown away by the results. Shutter speeds still work & the rangefinder was easy to calibrate
Wow, so cool. I now have two C-fours and love them. I have just put a roll of film through each and will see how well the rengefinder has held up. Truly proud that America had a high quality camera of it own back in the day. ❤
Goodness...This promo goes back many years. The sound kind of reminds me of the newsreels we would see before the movies, in the 50s! Nostalgia...love it.
My gosh, where did you find this? Started collecting Argus back in the 70's. Thanks. This is so great.
Very cool. Thanks for posting
I still use my Argus C3. AWESOME camera. thx for the GREAT video.
The Argus C3 is the best camera ever!
I still use my C4.
An interesting video, but there is no Argus product which could rationally be extended the adjective of "fine". Argus cameras were fairly simply designed and constructed. They never delivered images which were in a class with the high quality cameras and lenses of their day. Whether Argus could have built a better camera might be debated, but they targeted a middle class market in the post-war US and built to the economic capacity of that market. I remember that when I took school photography around 1961, several students used Argus C-3 models. Their distinctive aspect was that since Argus used oiled sleeves where others used bearings, there was a continuing flow of metal dust being cast off from the moving surfaces. Note in the video that Argus displays a three-element triplet as the referenced lens, whereas the four element Tessar or its copy was by then the minimum standard of reference for quality 35mm photography. The one thing you can give to Argus is that they were reputed to be the first company to use computer aided lens design when they built a new 50mm 2.8 standard lens for the C-33/C-44 models, done in conjunction with the University of Michigan.
Idk my post-war a2b is my favorite little piece of history. I got it for cheap in working condition as a fun little project to fix and then use and I love it. Bonus points is that ann arbor where they were manufactured is about 20 minutes from where I live and have lived for all my life so some michigan history is fun.