Phil Koenig

In the late 1950s Detroit was known for cars with tail fins, and this camera.

Detroit, 1957

Synonomous with the American automobile industry for well over 100 years, Detroit was once the home of a major camera maker too. My Argus and the car shown below were both made in 1957 in the Detroit area.

The Argus ‘brick’

Argus cameras were made by a Depression-era startup company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a college town near Detroit. They made durable, utilitarian 35mm cameras for the popular market.

Their signature product was the C3, a chunky, heavy, rectangular camera. It was affectionately known as the ‘brick’ and vast numbers were sold in the mid-20th century.

American cameras: not much presence in the mid-tier market

In the early- to mid-20th century, American camera manufacturers concentrated on the professional market and the popular market.

• Pro-level: The Graflex, Speed Graphic, Korona, and Deardorff are examples of American top-tier professional cameras. They primarily used large format sheet film. Medium format and 35mm pro-level cameras of this era were mostly made in Germany and Sweden (examples include Leica, Rolleiflex, and Hasselblad).

• Popular level: At the other end of the range, popular photography had been invented by Kodak in the late 19th century (Pritchard, 2015) and for the next several decades that market was served in the U.S. by Kodak and competitors such as Argus.

There were not many U.S.-made offerings in the mid-range ‘advanced amateur’ segment. Those cameras were for the most part German, and later, Japanese. Kodak’s product line included an excellent mid-range camera, the Retina, but it was designed and made in Germany.

Argus made a move into that market

In the 1950s Argus introduced a mid-tier product line, the C4 and its variants, manufactured from 1951 to 1962. The C44 was in production from 1956 to 1957 (Argus Museum; McKeown, 1996).

The C44 came with three lenses and other accessories as shown above. The lenses are branded as Argus Coated Cintagon. The 50mm lens is U.S-made and the other two are marked ‘Steinheil München Germany’.

Argus’s up-scale move ultimately didn’t work. German and Japanese competitors prevailed and Argus was driven out of business.

Argus C44’s design

In the 1930s to 1950s, copying the Leica was a popular product strategy around the world. The Argus designers, however, followed their own road.

The C44 has rounded edges and the chrome has a satin finish that’s different from other cameras. Shutters are not usually style elements but the C44’s is unconventional, in an attractive aqua blue. Steve Jobs insisted on good design in the internals of his products and he would have approved (Isaacson [2011] discusses this).

The back removes for film loading, like the Nikon F, Zeiss Ikon Contaflex, Rollei 35, Zarya, and some others. This is a very good design because it eliminates the foam seals used on many cameras with hinged film-loading doors.

Using the Argus C44

The Argus C44 has a smooth, quality feel except for the focus and lens mount which are clunky. The lens mount gets a lot of criticism and I understand that. But I do most of my work with a 50mm lens so it doesn’t irritate me so much.

Shutter speeds are limited to 300, 100, 50, 25, 10, and B. This is roughly comparable to my Leica IIf whose shutter speeds are 500, 200, 100, 60, 40, 30, and B.

The Argus Building

The Argus Building is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near the university. Argus was based there. The interior was later remodeled into office space, while the exterior preserves its industrial heritage.

The Argus Museum

The Argus Museum occupies several rooms in the Argus Building. The museum is not large but it has an extensive and well-organized collection of Argus cameras, other Argus artifacts and documents, and informative notes.

It’s an important resource for those interested in Argus cameras, the history of the American photographic industry, and Depression-era business and society.