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56
8 Tricks And Modifications
When the Argus debuted in 1936, taking a picture was still a hit or miss endeavor. Light
meters were primitive and hardly more accurate than charts. Flash bulbs had just been
invented and were still quite unreliable. Each type of film came with its own chart of
shutter speed and f-stop combinations, depending on the lighting conditions (“Is this
BRIGHT SUN or HAZY SUN?”). Taking a picture meant that you had to take a chance
that all of your settings were correct.
This uncertain environment lead many photographers to experiment with the
available photographic equipment and techniques to get the pictures they wanted. Some
of the earliest practical flash guns were invented by reporters who needed a dependable
flash in uncertain conditions. Kodachrome, the first feasible color film, was originally
developed by two photographers who doubled as musicians. The photographers of yore
understood that if they wanted a unique picture, they had to fit the unique circumstances
themselves.
It was in the spirit of these entrepreneurial souls that this chapter was written.
While the Argus works well enough the way it was designed, it can be pushed and
adapted to work under a wide variety of circumstances.
This chapter is divided into two main sections: Tricks and Modifications.
Roughly defined, Tricks are anything you can do without actually altering the camera.
Modifications are changes you can make to your camera in order to take make it adapt to
a certain need. Everything but the Cold Shoe Modification in this chapter is reversible
and leaves no permanent damage to the camera, in order to preserve your camera’s
historical value.
Tricks
Using “Ground Glass”
For close-up photographs of less than five feet, parallax tends to make the View
Finder inaccurate. Objects that are centered on the View Finder are pushed to the edges
of the negative, people are decapitated, etc. This problem is not unique to the Argus
camera; any camera that uses separate viewing and picture-making lenses suffers from
the same difficulty.
To compensate for this error, Argus photographers used to remove the Rear Cover
and place a piece of ground glass against the film track. The ground glass would then
show exactly what the negative would see, without any parallax. The photographer
would then position the camera, remove the glass, load the film, and take the picture.
Ground glass can still be used for the same purpose, but there is an easier and
cheaper alternative. Frosted Scotch™ tape, easily found and very cheap, can do the job
almost as well. Scotch™ brand refers to it as 810D, but most no-name brands will work
just as well, so long as the tape is evenly frosted. A width of ¾ of an inch works best.
Take a short piece of tape, about two inches long, and run it along the top track of
the film plane, exactly where the 35mm negative will sit when you take a picture. Try to
keep the tape from bending or bubbling; the flatter it is, the more accurate your view will
be. If you repeat this procedure for the bottom track the two pieces of tape should
overlap slightly. Again, try to keep the tape as flat as possible between the two tracks.