[rollei_list] Re: Argomania
- From: Don Williams <dwilli10@xxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:09:14 -0600
At 12:01 AM 1/8/2010, Javier wrote:
Hi Everyone
FYI, you might want to have a look at this book about Argus cameras.
Since most of you are serious camera collectors or photo historians,
I don't have to explain the significance of the old Argus to
photography! I'm sure the veterans among you have some interesting
Argus stories
to tell.
Javier
Thanks,
My High School Graduation present (exactly 60 years ago) was an Argus
C4. (I really wanted a Kodak 35, I think it was called).
I used it through college and bought a battery-powered flash for it
in Panama in 1953 during my Midshipman Cruise. It was disappointing
at first. I kept getting low exposures, regardless of the F-stop
setting. I finally opened the camera and pointed the flash on the
behind-the-lens shutter and found that the F speed setting was
causing the flash to fire when the shutter was half open, so that the
shutter was acting as the F-stop. I then took the camera open,
ground a new cam on the shutter drive shaft, and created an X-sync.
That worked fine and I still have an under water housing I made for
it but gave the camera to someone a few years back. It had a design
defect in that the "shutter-toggle", a lever that runs in a grove in
the shutter drive shaft would break every few months. Argus always
gave me replacements but they finally became unavailable and the
camera sat around for 30 or so years. I couldn't bear to toss it out
so I found someone who wanted it so I sent it to a new home.
The first time the toggle broke I sent it back to Argus and they
repaired it but the bent my new set of flash contacts away from the
cam. I bent it back and it worked fine. I do remember that I had to
add a light shield to keep the spark at the contacts from exposing the frame.
I think the strobe battery was 67 volts, perhaps more, and that was
what was supplied to the capacitor. Nice little German-made strobe.
The book looks interesting but it's out of my price range.
Regards to all.
DAW
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