Happy Argus Day!

Every Argus Day (or Argust Day as some fans refer to it), photographers dig out their ancient Argus cameras, load up some film, and shoot the old fashioned way. Any Argus camera will do but the most commonly used is the Argus C3, which was at one time the best-selling American-made camera in the world. Unlike other holidays that occur every year on the same date, Argus Day slides slowly across the calendar at the rate of one day per year. The first Argus Day was on August 1. The next year it was on August 2. To determine when Argus day falls on any given year, there’s a simple mathematical formula: Argus Day = July 31 + (current year – 2000). So in 2010, that gives August 10 – today.

Argus Day was dreamed up by James M. Surprenant, Marcy Merrill and other members of the Argus Collectors Group. The idea is once you’ve shot your Argus day photos, you submit your two best ones to ACG and they’ll display them on their flickr group.

Dallas Makerspace is celebrating Argus Day in two ways. First, I’m out shooting photos on my newly acquired 1947 postwar Argus C3 (I’m really into vintage cameras in case you weren’t aware). If all goes well, expect to see the photos posted soon. Second, we’ve created a handy new Camera Holidays Calendar in our wiki to remind you about Argus Day and all the similar days like Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, Polaroid Day, 127 Day, and more. We’ve also released as free software (GPL v3), a simple PHP script that generates an iCal feed of all those dates. You can subscribe directly to the iCal feed or download the source and do whatever you like with it. Our code relies on the iCalcreator free software library.