Canon 310XL

XL stands for existing light. Kodak coined it in 1971 for cameras built to film indoors without lamps, and by the middle of the decade almost everything was badged XL whether it deserved it or not. The 310XL deserved it. Canon gave it an f/1.0 lens and a 220 degree shutter, which together gather something close to two stops more light than an ordinary camera of the period, and then made the whole thing weigh 580 grams with batteries in. Canon marketed it in August 1975 at 44,500 yen, between the Auto Zoom 512XL Electronic in March and the 514XL in October. Three low-light bodies in eight months. Canon's own museum claims the world's fastest lens speed at the time, f/1.0. It was sold as the easy one, and it shares its body base with the 514XL that followed two months later. One filming speed, no manual aperture, two AA cells. You pointed it and it worked, and that is exactly why it is still in production today in a manner of speaking: Pro8mm in Burbank rebuild the 310XL and sell it as a current camera, on the grounds that it does something nothing else does. Of every Super 8 body they could have chosen, they chose this one.

Available light. Evenings, bars, candles, a window in winter. This is the whole reason the camera exists and it is still about as much light as Super 8 will ever collect. Carrying. It is 39 by 112 by 176 millimetres and runs on two AA cells you can buy at a petrol station, which makes it the Super 8 camera you actually take with you rather than the one you plan a day around. Anyone starting. There is one speed and no manual aperture, so there is nothing to set wrong. Single frames, through the cable release socket, and close-ups down to about 215 millimetres from the film plane without an accessory. Where it falls short: 18 frames a second and nothing else, so no 24 for sync work and no 9 to buy back a stop. No manual aperture and no exposure lock either, which is the real limitation on modern stock. If the meter drifts, or the cartridge notch tells the camera something untrue, your only correction is a backlight plate worth about two stops. The finder is an aerial image with no split-image aid, so at f/1.0, where depth of field is almost nothing, you are focusing on faith. And the zoom is three times, 8.5 to 25.5mm: wide to normal, never long.

Two fresh alkaline AAs, then run it. It should start instantly and hold one steady note.

First, and always. White or green crust on the springs means a cell has leaked. A camera that only works when you press the door shut has already lost a contact.

Shine a torch through from the front. A milky veil is haze. Branching filaments are fungus. Rainbow edges inside a cemented group are separation.

Work the switch between daylight and the Q mark and look through the front. The orange element should swing in and out.

The foam around the cartridge door. Sticky black tar or crumbs means they are gone.

Point it at a bright window and then into a dark corner and watch the aperture move in the finder. It should swing smartly and settle, not lag or stick.

Load a cartridge, scratch a mark in the film with a fingernail, run the camera, and look again.

Most cameras sent for repair are not broken. Put a fresh set in before you conclude anything, and do it before you test any other fault on this page, because tired cells imitate half of them. Use ordinary alkaline cells, not rechargeables. Not because rechargeables damage anything — they do not, and one or two makers supplied their own rechargeable packs — but because of three things that all read as a broken camera. A nickel-metal-hydride cell is 1.2 volts against an alkaline's 1.5, so six of them give 7.2 volts where the camera expects 9. A battery check built for alkalines reads that as flat. A meter calibrated at 1.5 volts reads the light wrong at 1.2. And ordinary rechargeables lose ten to fifteen per cent of their charge every month sitting in a drawer, so a camera used three times a year is dead every time you pick it up, where alkalines lose two or three per cent in a year. If you want rechargeables anyway, use low-self-discharge cells, charge them the week you shoot, and trust the battery check less. Never mix old and new cells, or two chemistries, in one camera. And take them out when you put the camera away: a leaking cell is the commonest way a working camera becomes a dead one.

Cartridges do jam, and it is not always the camera. Shooters have reported cartridges that would not advance in one body and ran perfectly in another, and the same fault following the cartridge rather than the camera across different models. The test takes ten seconds and settles it. Take the cartridge out, mark the film through the front window with a permanent pen, put it back, run the camera two or three seconds, and take it out again. If the mark has gone, the film moved. Three separate labs give that same test. Then swap. Try a different cartridge in the same camera, or the same cartridge in a different camera. One bad roll points at the cartridge. Three bad rolls point at the camera. Things that mislead people: the footage counter can move while the film does not, so it proves nothing on its own. And check each roll reads EXPOSED at the end before you send it off. If it jams, do not open the cartridge. You cannot inspect it without fogging the film, and you destroy both the footage and the evidence. Send it to the lab anyway — they open it in darkness and can often recover what was shot. Kodak runs a feedback form for cartridges, and some sellers will replace a jammed one. One popular explanation is worth correcting: the story that Vision3 stocks jam because their base is thicker, being designed for 16mm and 35mm. Kodak's own data describes the 35mm and Super 8 versions of a stock identically and publishes no base thickness at all. The only documented difference is between negative and reversal film, and the lab that documents it says the thicker negative helps rather than hurts. The jams that are documented were on reversal stock.

The commonest reason one of these is dead. Light surface crust cleans off at home with a contact cleaner and gentle abrasion. Corrosion that has travelled down the leads into the body needs the wires replaced, which is a technician's job.

The foam around the cartridge door turns to tar. Replacing the door perimeter with self-adhesive light-seal foam is a straightforward evening at home. Foam that has shed into the gate is not.

Fifty-year-old grease stiffens. Running the camera sometimes frees it; beyond that it is a strip, degrease and relubricate on a bench. Pro8mm list shutter and drive lubrication and gearbox servicing as separate line items in their restoration of this model, which tells you how routine it is.

This is the fault to expect on any unserviced camera of this age. How far out varies by example, and no published survey covers this model, so do not trust a number anybody gives you. Check it against a handheld meter and recalibrate on a bench if it matters. One thing worth correcting: the common explanation, a dead CdS cell, is usually wrong. The cells themselves age well. What has actually failed is oxidation in the surrounding circuit. Do not let anyone sell you a cell replacement on a guess.

Film is dragged through the gate but not wound in. Hard to spot without running a cartridge, and it is an adjustment rather than a part swap. Technician.

Freeing the slide means opening the body. Technician.

It can be cleaned, and there is a published thirteen-step teardown for the 310XL and 514XL lens. But opening it disturbs collimation, and the camera will then focus inaccurately with nothing in the finder to warn you. Professionals recollimate afterwards as a separate operation. Unless you can do that, this is a technician's job without qualification.