Phil Koenig

‘57 Chevy contemporary, made in a suburb of Detroit.

Detroit, 1957

My Argus C44 was made in a Detroit-area factory in 1957. The same year and neighborhood as the ‘57 Chevy, a major automotive classic.

(Date source for my camera: Argus Museum.)

A refined Argus camera

Argus cameras were made by a Depression-era startup company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a college town near Detroit. Argus achieved success by making durable, utilitarian cameras for the popular market. They’re best known for the simple ‘Argus brick’ model of which vast numbers were sold in the mid-20th century.

My Argus C44 is a more refined product of the company’s unsuccessful 1950s attempt to compete with the Germans and the Japanese in the mid-level camera market.

American cameras: Not much mid-tier presence

In the early- to mid-20th century, American camera manufacturers concentrated on the professional market, and the popular market. Professional cameras included the Graflex, the Speed Graphic, and view cameras by Calumet, Deardorff, Eastman Kodak, Korona, Seneca, and others.

At the other end of the range, Pritchard (2015) explains how popular photography was invented by Kodak in the late 19th century (‘you press the button, we do the rest’). For the next several decades that market was served in the U.S. by Kodak and competitors such as Argus.

But there were few U.S.-made offerings in the mid-range ‘advanced amateur’ segment. Those cameras were for the most part German and then Japanese. Kodak had an excellent mid-range camera, the Retina, but it was designed and made in Germany.

The mid-range Argus C44

In the 1950s Argus, successful with popular cameras, tried to move up-market with a new American-made product line, the C4. Versions were in production from 1951 to 1962 and the C44, made from 1956 to 1957, was one (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 others are marked ‘Steinheil München Germany’.

Design

The Argus designers followed their own road and did a ‘clean sheet’ design. They didn’t copy the Leica as a number of other camera manufacturers did in the 1950s.

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 a bit unconventional looking, 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, and some others. This is a 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 both of which are clunky. The lens mount gets a lot of criticism and I understand that. But I’m mostly a nifty-fifty user so it doesn’t irritate me so much.

Shutter speeds are limited to 300, 100, 50, 25, 10, and B. On the other hand, my Leica IIf shutter speeds are limited to 500, 200, 100, 60, 40, 30, and B so the Argus is not too badly handicapped.

The Argus Building

The Argus Building is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near the university. In the 1930s Argus was based there. It was later remodeled into an office building, while preserving 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 the exhibits include 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.