Argus Seventy-five (1949-1958) and Argus 75 (1959-1964)

The Seventy-five is a simple camera with a fixed focus lens and a single speed shutter. Argus began to make the Argus Seventy-five, a simplified version of the Argoflex EF twin lens reflex camera, in 1949 and continued to produce it until 1958. The Argus 75 has a restyled exterior with the color changed from black to dark brown and a different pattern on the metal trim, but otherwise is the same camera, and was made from 1959 to 1964.

Front

Back

The body is molded phenolic resin plastic with metal trim and a die-cast metal back. There is a tripod socket on the bottom. An Argus 76 flash gun plugs into the side. The body appears to be nearly the same as the Argus 40 and the Argus Super Seventy-five. A carrying case was available.

The lens is a simple meniscus with a focal length of 75 mm and a fixed aperture of about f/13. Pictures are acceptably sharp with the subject seven or more feet away. A slip-on closeup lens was available for head-and-shoulder portraits from about three or four feet away.

The shutter is a rotary type with a speed of about 1/50 of a second. The shutter is cocked when the film winding knob is turned and a red flag appears behind the lens to tell the photographer that the camera is ready to take a picture. After the picture is taken the red flag disappears to tell you to advance the film. This simple double exposure prevention system eliminates one common amateur mistake, although it is still possible to overlap frames by winding too little, or skip a frame by accidentally winding too far. A small lever near the shutter button lets you switch from "instantaneous" (1/50 second) to "time" (the shutter stays open as long as you press the shutter button).

The viewfinder is a large, bright, waist-level brilliant viewfinder. A brilliant viewfinder has two positive lenses and a mirror, and produces a mirror reversed, but upright, image. A brilliant finder does not show whether the subject is in focus. On a 75 the taking lens sees a wider scene than the viewfinder does. This feature does reduce the chance of cutting off the top of the subject's head in the picture, but you might also get extraneous detail around the edge of the picture that you didn't see in the viewfinder.

The cameras take twelve 2-1/4" square pictures on a roll of Kodak 620 or Agfa PB20 film. You space the pictures on the film by looking through the little red window at the numbers printed on the backing paper. They will work with modern 120 size film if it is re-spooled onto a 620 spool. Size 120 films can't be used as-is with these cameras because the film spools are too big to fit. 620 film is the same as 120 film except for the spool it is wound on, which means you can re-spool a roll of 120 film onto an old 620 spool to use in these cameras. You need to re-spool in total darkness inside a darkroom or inside a film changing bag. For daylight pictures you need to use 100 speed black and white or color film.

The Seventy-fives are similar to the Kodak Duaflex with a Kodet lens, the Ansco Rediflex, the Spartus Full-Vue, and others. These are family snapshot cameras for sunny days outdoors or for flash pictures indoors. The list price in 1950 was $14.89, which was roughly equivalent in buying power to $140 in depreciated 2019 dollars. Old Seventy-fives are fairly easy to take apart and clean. They are so simple mechanically that there isn't much to go wrong.