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quarter of the way around the inside rim and cut it off. Try to fit it on the lens mount.
Continue this process of unwrapping and trying until the lens cap fits snugly. Use the
razor to trim the excess plastic and tape, and admire your new lens cap! If making a lens
cap for the pre-war Argus A2B and A2F, make small notches in the lens cap to
accommodate the screws in the face plate.
Hand-Held Or Accessory-Shoe Mounted Rangefinder
These devices measure the distance between the camera and the object being
photographed. They are used to ensure that your subject appears in focus. While they
were popular from the 30’s to the 50’s, SLR cameras and cameras with coupled
rangefinders made them unnecessary.
Rangefinders are more practical on the Argus AF and A2F with their variable
focus. Companies that manufactured rangefinders for accessory shoes include
Watameter, Telex, Hugo Meyer, Rainbow, Waltz, and Ideal. They often had a clip which
sat in a camera’s accessory shoe.
Flash Guns
The main selling point of the Argus AA and FA was their ability to use flash.
While this does not seem fantastic to us now, it was revolutionary at the time of the
introduction of the AA. The flashbulb had only been invented a few years earlier; many
photographers still used dirty and dangerous flash powder. Candid indoor pictures, night
shots, and flash fill photography all suddenly became possible with the introduction of
flash-synchronized cameras like the Argus AA. At the time, it was a major step for
amateur photography.
Unfortunately, flashbulb photography now has several distinct disadvantages.
Flashbulbs are no longer widely manufactured, and while they are not rare or even
uncommon, they soon will be. Even those that can still be found are aging and becoming
less reliable. Flash bulbs require large flash guns and produce much more light than
electronic flashes, making them much more intrusive for public use. Like the once-
common vacuum tube, the flashbulb belongs to that growing family of self-consuming
technologies that will soon join the dinosaurs.
When acquiring a flash for your Argus camera, make certain that you purchase a
flash that will fit your camera. The Argus AA uses a flash gun whose flash posts are
3/4ths of an inch apart (center to center). This flash is also used with the Argus C3.
The Argus FA uses a special flash however, that is not compatible with the Argus
AA or C3. For a flash to fit the Argus FA, the flash posts must be 1.2 inches apart
(center to center).
There is one flash accessory that can be used with any Argus camera. When
flashbulbs first became popular, many cameras could not be easily adapted for use with a
flash. Several companies tried to capitalize on this by making flash adapters that would
screw into a generic Cable Release Socket and synchronize the camera shutter with a
flash gun. These adapters can still be found. They do, however, require a bit of fine
tuning and this will consume some of your precious supply of flashbulbs.
On a final note, be aware that due to considerable timing differences an electronic
flash cannot just be connected to a camera that expects flashbulbs. Modern electronic
flashes cannot be used with a flashbulb camera without timing alterations to the camera.