The Golden Shield is probably the rarest version of the C3. It was produced in 1960 and 1961 which was after Argus had been acquired by Sylvania. Sylvania had another subsidiary called Golden Shield and they made special versions of Sylvania owned products like cameras and radios. The Argus Golden Shield C3 replaced the normal leatherette covering with a silvery metallic padded covering. Otherwise it is a C3 Matchmatic with the funky Exposure Value System as you can see by the lack of shutter speeds on the upper right dial. Instead of using a normal light meter to determine the shutter speed and aperture combo directly, you would use the special LC3 meter with EV markings on it. If the me
Argus was the company that made 35mm film popular in the US. It was also know as the poor man's Leica. The A models were shaped more like a Leica, but when Argus introduced the C3 model, also known as "The Brick," they really showed their 1930s radio manufacturer roots. The C3 sold over one million cameras. I have several Argus cameras in my collection (they're very cheap on eBay). One C3 I bought was a 1947 model where the original black leatherette was all dried out, cracking and peeling away. I decided to re-skin it, and because I already had a black model from 1956, decided to re-skin it in blue. I originally ordered a leather kit from Camera Leather. I paid online, got a nice e-mail
This is a special camera because it was my grandfather's. He bought it in 1954, which was the year I was born and used it to take lots of pictures of me and my aunt (who is only 3 years older than me) and my younger brother.I had just finished scanning all the negatives I had from various film cameras I owned over the years, as well as a few photo prints I had from childhood which included a few my grandfather had taken with this camera. I called my aunt Dawn and asked her if she knew what became of the camera and lo and behold, she said she had it and it showed up in the mail a week later. I couldn't remember what model camera he had because I was very young and knew nothing about cameras.
