Argus C-Forty-four and Cintagon/Steinheil 4.5/35mm

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

These things are usually found in perfect working order -

The real American answer to the Leica, the Argus rangefinder, this version from 1956. Cheap, rugged, durable, easy to fix (if ever you need to fix one), easy to use - hey, its much easier to load film in these than in a Leica III - and if you lose one, no tears.

Performance ? As a body, its not bad. The controls are really obvious and very much what one expects these days. There is double-exposure protection, winding is integrated with shutter-cocking, the rangefinder/viewfinder is large and bright, there is no problem with winding before setting speeds like with the USSR cameras. Very trouble-free.

The biggest problem really is limited speeds, it only goes from 1/10 to 1/300 plus B, and its a simple, almost crude leaf shutter. But there are no curtains to go bad or complex mechanisms with lots of moving parts to stick together.

The lens mount has been poorly rated online, but its really not that bad, once you learn the trick, and changing lenses is really quite quick and simple.

There were just a few lenses made for the C-Forty-four (it was always spelled out on the camera), the 35mm, 100mm and 1.9/50 were made by Steinheil, and Argus itself made the 2.8/50. Some others were made by third parties for the more common C-3's, but not for this more developed version.

No f/1.5 lenses, no Visoflex, no 21mm; and I don't think that Steinheil 35mm is very good, it flares way more than I would like; on the other hand, Cartier-Bresson just used the Elmar. He could have used one of these - at least he would have loaded his film faster.

The accessory finders came in different versions, some were also sold for use with the C-3's. This one is made in Lichtenstein for Argus, perhaps by Kilfitt or Contina ? In any case its quite neat and effective. One just has to remember to set the range for the parallax adjustment.

I just shot two rolls a couple of weeks ago, of Arista Edu 100, which is apparently actually Fomapan. Developed by Gasser in San Francisco and scanned at 2400dpi with my Canon 8400. If there is a lack of sharpness in these its probably the scanner, the negatives look just fine.

mo · Expire: 2016-07-30

Thanks for passing on some knowledge...love the camera,looks great.

Jesito · Expire: 2015-01-07

Really nice shots!.

I like very much the C4x series. I keep a C4 and is a pleasure to use.

Regards.

Jes.