Argus

Argus buildings:

Argus Building, 535 West William Street, now an office building, and home of the Argus Museum

Curved corner of former Argus optics shop, across 4th Street from factory. Currently owned by university

The entrance of that building

East side of Argus factory building, facing parking lot

C3 and C3 Matchmatic

Argus Inc. was a camera maker based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Before 1939 it was International Research Corporation, a department of International Radio Corporation, Ann Arbor. It was the American company that popularized the modern cartridged 35mm film in the U.S., especially by its characteristically brick-shaped rangefinder cameras. The first camera of Argus, the Argus A, resulted from a patent that the company received in 1936. Before that time the company had produced radios, among them some bakelite models.

Argus became a great name in the Ann Arbor's economy. Several buildings of its heydays are still known as Argus building. One of these pearls of the city's brick architecture has become a modern office building now, with a public area where a permanent exhibition of Argus cameras is shown, the Argus Museum.

Some Argus products were OEM products made by other makers.

image 1940's, by Charles Dunlap

List of Argus Cameras

A-series

• Argus A
• Argus A2B
• Argus A2F
• Argus AA
• Argus A3
• Argus AF
• Argus B
• Argus FA

A-series Links

• 35mm For The Proletariat: A Modern User's Guide To The Argus A/A2 Camera

C-series

• Argus C
• Argus C2
• Argus C3
• Argus C3 colormatic
• Argus C3 Golden Shield
• Argus C3 MatchMatic
• Argus C3 Standard
• Argus C33
• Argus C-twenty

Autronic Series

• Argus Autronic 35
• Argus Autronic C3
• Argus Autronic I
• Argus Autronic II

TLR

• Argus 40
• Argus 75
• Argus Super Seventy-Five
• Argus Argoflex 40
• Argus Argoflex E
• Argus Argoflex EF
• Argus Argoflex EM
• Argus Argoflex II
• Argus Argoflex Seventy-Five

Other

• Argus 21

• Argus A-Four
• Argus C4
• Argus C44
• Argus C44R
• Argus C4 Modified
• Argus C4R
• Argus Model M
• Argus 127 (Whitehouse Products)
• Argus CR-2 (Chinon)
• Argus/Cosina STL 1000 (Cosina)
• Argus Lady Carefree and Argus Flash Sensor 235x (Sedic)
• Argus V-100 (German OEM)

Sources

Links

• Argus C: the first best-selling 135 film camera (1938), at DCView (in Chinese, English translation)
• The Argus Museum: Ann Arbor's Hidden Treasure (PDF), by Henry Gambino, at The Argus Museum
• Argus page at Collection G. Even's site
• Various Argus Camera at Sylvain Halgand's collection
• Argus Camera Historyon the Argus Company site
• Argus Camera Photographers Group and Pool on Flickr
• When was my Argus camera made?, by Phillip G. Sterritt, at Photo.net
• Argus still camera and slide projector reference guides, by Phillip G. Sterritt, at Photo.net

Manuals

• Listing of different Argus instruction manuals in PDF format

Books

• DESCHIN, Jacob. Picture making with the Argus C3, C4, A4: A working manual. Camera Craft Pub. Co., San Francisco, 1954. Library of Congress 54012589.
• GAMBINO, Henry J. Argomania: A look at Argus cameras and the company that made them. Aeone Communications, Doylestown (Pennsylvania), 2005. ISBN 0-9770507-0-X.
• KUZYK, Hrad. 35mm for the proletariat: A modern user's guide to the Argus A/A2 camera. Hrad Kuzyk, 2007. ISBN 0615144888.
• LAHUE, Kalton C. and BAILEY, Joseph A. Collecting vintage cameras, vol. 1: The American 35mm. American Photographic Book Publishing Company, New York, 1972. ISBN 081740547X.
• LAHUE, Kalton C. and BAILEY, Joseph. Glass, brass, & chrome. University of Oklahoma Press, Oklahoma, 1972. ISBN 0-8061-0968-8. 2002: ISBN 0-8061-3434-8.
• MURPHY, Burt. Argus 35mm photography. Verlan Books, New York, 1959. Library of Congress 59015881.
• TYDINGS, Kenneth. The Argus 35mm guide and reference book. Greenburg, New York, 1952. Library of Congress 52008125.