Fine Cameras and How The are Made" 1953 Argus film

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I watched this this morning when it popped up in my Youtube recommended.

Mostly focuses on the Argus C-4, with some references to the C-3, though it's cool to see how they did lens grinding and coating. Plenty of marketing fluff too.
 

Sirius Glass

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Thank you for posting the video. It was enjoyable.
 

btaylor

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Mostly focuses on the Argus C-4, with some references to the C-3, though it's cool to see how they did lens grinding and coating. Plenty of marketing fluff too.

Well, it is a marketing piece for Argus, so to be expected though it’s is pretty heavy handed! The part where the narrator says the Argus is “the world’s finest camera” is notably followed by the statement “dollar for dollar,” which is probably true! For some reason I always greatly disliked the look of the C3, “the brick.”

Thanks for posting, Kino. I enjoy these old films!
 

Crysist

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I'm addicted to videos like these, but it's quite hard to find many. I just really love how they show the difficult of the process and how they achieve it. I know any company would want to make themselves look good, but they're convincing of all of it.

The film also went over the blocks used to hold the lenses during grinding, how they differ, how many they need, how they're made in more detail than I've seen from other films about lenscrafting. Thank you for sharing!!

For a point of comparison, here is a film by Kodak Hawkeye about their lensmaking process:



I'm not sure how old each were at the time of making these films, but it does call into question the claims about being the only ones with such grinding machines! Regardless, I can't argue with the amount of "infrastructure" required for a company to produce lenses or entire cameras in-house, the metrology needed to verify it all, machine all the parts, etc.
 

mshchem

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I'm addicted to videos like these, but it's quite hard to find many. I just really love how they show the difficult of the process and how they achieve it. I know any company would want to make themselves look good, but they're convincing of all of it.

The film also went over the blocks used to hold the lenses during grinding, how they differ, how many they need, how they're made in more detail than I've seen from other films about lenscrafting. Thank you for sharing!!

For a point of comparison, here is a film by Kodak Hawkeye about their lensmaking process:



I'm not sure how old each were at the time of making these films, but it does call into question the claims about being the only ones with such grinding machines! Regardless, I can't argue with the amount of "infrastructure" required for a company to produce lenses or entire cameras in-house, the metrology needed to verify it all, machine all the parts, etc.


This is great.
 
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