I built this camera from parts I had on hand. The main body came from a 1954 Ricoh Ricolet. The lens and shutter assembly are from a late 1930's Argus Model A. The rewind crank was out of one of my many spare parts bins.

The lens/shutter just fit SO well into the front opening of the Ricolet body, and was even close to perfect for lens to film plane focal registration. This camera is fixed-focus with no means of focusing in use. But a little shimming set it for sharpest focus while aperture is wide open at about 20 feet from the subject. Stopping down puts the DOF at an acceptable range for nearly any distance.

The shutter trip link protruding from the body matched quite well with the Argus shutter release lever.

I ended up with a camera with several design advantages over a stock Argus Model A. The metal body is sturdier than an Argus bakelite body. The finder window is bigger and brighter. The rewind crank is easier to use than a simple knob. The shutter release button on top of the body is much smoother, allowing for more steady use in hand held longer exposures. And the wind lock internal mechanism is an improvement over the Argus system.

The camera proved to be a joy to use.

One day this month I took the Argolet off display and loaded up with a short roll of ASA 100 Chinese made film. The roll is nominally 10 exposure, but it was designed to be used with a companion small plastic camera. The Argolet is wider inside, spool to spool, so due to loading the film over a wider expanse it yielded only 7 frames of exposure.

I misjudged how much of the image would be cut off at the corners with the sun shade I put on the front of the lens. It would have been better without.

Image "a" is the view looking out my kitchen window. Image "b" is my front porch. The remaing five images were captured in the "Old Town" neighborhood of Fenton, Missouri.

I developed the film myself with my recipe for "Caffenol," which uses safe household ingredients and renders all films including color in monochrome. The sepia tint was added in software after scanning the negatives.

Please click on thumbnails to see enlarged.
All images are ©2024 E.J.Kowalski.
Thanks! Ed