This photo of my photoalbum was taken in Okinawa.

Argus is an American maker of cameras and photographic products, founded in 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Argus originated as a subsidiary of the International Radio Corporation (IRC), founded by Charles Verschoor. Its best-known product was the C3 rangefinder camera, which enjoyed a 27-year production run and became one of the top-selling cameras in history. The company's Model A was the first low-cost 35 mm camera in the United States. Argus was acquired by Sylvania in 1959 and sold off in 1969, by which time it had ceased camera production (some rebadged cameras continued to be sold under the Argus name through the 1970s). More recently, the Argus brand has been reestablished and is used on a variety of inexpensive digital cameras made by Argus Camera Company, LLC., located in Inverness, IL.

The history of Carl Zeiss AG begins in Jena before World War II, then the world's largest location of camera production. Zeiss Ikon represented a significant part of the production along with dozens of other brands and factories, and also had major works at Dresden. The destruction of the war caused many companies to divide into smaller subcompanies and others to merge together. There was great respect for the engineering innovation that came out of Dresden—before the war the world's first 35 mm single-lens reflex camera, the Kine Exakta, and the first miniature camera with good picture quality were developed there. At the end of the war Jena was occupied by the US Army. When Jena and Dresden were incorporated into the Soviet occupation zone, later East Germany, Zeiss Jena was assisted by the US army to relocate to the Contessa manufacturing facility in Stuttgart, West Germany, while the remainder of Zeiss Jena was taken over by the (Eastern) German Democratic Republic as Kombinat VEB Zeiss Jena[1]. The occupying Russians took most of the existing Zeiss factories and tooling back to Russia as the Kiev camera works, which produced low-quality copies of the Contax and other Zeiss Ikon products. The western business was restarted in Oberkochen (in southwestern Germany) as Opton Optische Werke Oberkochen GmbH in 1946, which became Zeiss-Opton Optische Werke Oberkochen GmbH in 1947, but was soon renamed to Carl Zeiss. Western German Zeiss products were labelled Opton when sold into the Eastern block, whilst Eastern German Zeiss products where labelled "Zeiss Jena" when sold to Western countries. In 1973, the Western Carl Zeiss AG entered into a licensing agreement with the Japanese camera company Yashica to produce a series of high-quality 35mm film cameras and lenses bearing the Contax and Zeiss brand names. This collaboration continued under Yashica's successor, Kyocera, until the latter ceased all camera production in 2005. Zeiss later produced lenses for the space industry and, more recently, has again produced high-quality 35mm camera lenses. Following German reunification, VEB Zeiss Jena became Zeiss Jena GmbH, which became JENOPTIC Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH in 1990. In 1991 the company name was shortened to JENOPTIC GmbH. The companies of the Zeiss Gruppe in and around Dresden have branched into new technologies: screens and products for the automotive industry, for example. Zeiss nonetheless still continues to be a camera manufacturer, and still produces the Pentacon, Praktica[2], and special-use lenses (e.g., Exakta). Today, there are arguably three companies with primarily Zeiss Ikon heritage: Zeiss Germany, the Finnish/Swedish Ikon (which bought the West German Zeiss Ikon AG), and the independent eastern Zeiss Ikon.