Canon 514XL

Canon marketed the 514XL in October 1975 at 57,500 yen, two months after the 310XL. Canon's own note on it is about compactness — a folding grip and plastic construction — but what it actually did was give the buyer things the 310XL withheld. A five-times zoom instead of three. A split-image rangefinder in the finder instead of a bare aerial image. Nine frames a second as well as eighteen. Macro at both ends of the zoom. And, most importantly, an exposure lock. The price of all that is the lens: f/1.4 rather than f/1.0, so a stop less light. On paper that makes it the lesser camera. In practice the exposure lock matters more than the stop, because it is the thing that lets you correct the camera when it is wrong, and fifty-year-old metering reading modern film can be wrong. A note on names. Canon's museum lists no 514XL Electronic; the Electronic name belongs to the Auto Zoom 512XL Electronic. The silent 514XL of 1975 is this camera, two AA cells, 9 and 18 frames a second. The Canosound 514XL-S of September 1976 is a different, heavier camera with magnetic sound, six AA cells and 18 and 24 frames a second. The AF514XL-S of 1980 adds autofocus to that. Canon's museum ties them together: the 514XL-S puts a sound mechanism on the 514XL's base body, and the AF514XL-S is the 514XL-S with autofocus added. Related, then, but three different cameras to buy.

A first Super 8 camera that you will not outgrow in a month. Five-times zoom, rangefinder focusing, exposure lock, macro at both ends, self-timer, single frame. It covers far more ground than the 310XL for very little more weight — 620 grams loaded. Modern colour negative, specifically because of the exposure lock. It is an affordable Canon on which you can override a cartridge the camera has misread, and Super8wiki documents exactly that case: the notch switches read Ektachrome 64T as 160 ASA and underexpose it. Low light, one stop behind the 310XL: f/1.4 against f/1.0. The 9 frames a second setting buys a stop back if you can live with everything moving at double speed on screen. Animation and time-lapse, through single frame and the cable release socket. Telephoto macro, at about 600 millimetres from the film-plane mark. Where it falls short: no 24 frames a second, so no sync speed. No fades or dissolves of any kind. No electric remote socket. f/1.4 rather than f/1.0. Silent. And the film speed range still stops at ISO 250.

Two fresh AA cells run everything on this camera: the drive, the power zoom and the meter. Fresh cells are the first test. After that, the springs. Bloom or crust there is a leaked cell.

Nine frames a second is not a slow-motion setting, it is a low-light setting: fewer frames means longer exposure on each one, and on screen it plays back faster, not slower. Canon's manual offers it as a way to exaggerate movement for comic effect. What to listen for instead: run it at 9 and at 18 and the note should drop clearly at 9. A selector that does not change the note is a real fault, and one for a technician.

Look at a vertical edge and turn the focus ring. The two halves should shear apart and rejoin cleanly. If the halves meet only at a distance that disagrees with the focus scale, have the lens checked before relying on it.

Power zoom wide to tele and back several times. Canon gives about eight seconds at 18 fps. The canon-s8-repair site names three causes for a zoom motor that will not run: a jammed cog, a shaft wanting lubrication, or a seized motor. Then try the manual zoom and the macro lever; if those are free and the motor is not, that narrows it usefully.

A tungsten cartridge holds it in, and that is deliberate. A daylight cartridge swings it out, and there is a manual cancel as well, as on the 310XL. Try both before deciding anything. A slide that shifts for neither is stuck; one that stays put only for tungsten film is correct.

The cartridge notch comes first. This body reads three tungsten speeds, 40, 160 and 250, and three daylight, 25, 100 and 160, and nothing faster. After that the filter, and only then the meter, which is the one real fault of the three. The exposure lock means even a misread cartridge can be worked round on the camera rather than sent away.

Canon's own manual says never to run the self-timer with the main switch set to single frame, because it risks damaging the camera.

Tired batteries, a cartridge that will not run and a meter that cannot read the film's speed can all look like a broken Super 8 camera. How to rule each one out is written once, for every model, in Super 8: before you blame the camera. What follows is specific to this one.

Pro8mm's restoration of the 310XL and 514XL replaces the deteriorated foam. With the door open, press a fingernail into whatever foam is there. Foam that has gone to powder or sticky tar should be renewed when the camera is serviced, and it is cheap to rule out.

Two cells in one compartment on top of the body. A contact cleaner deals with crust on the springs. Once it has crept along the wires into the body, the wiring comes out, and that is a bench job.

The canon-s8-repair site gives a jammed cog, a shaft wanting lubrication or a seized motor as the causes. Technician, because the published guide to removing this lens runs to thirteen steps and collimation is at stake.

Both appear in the canon-s8-repair site's notes on Canon Super 8 cameras, which call a camera that will not stop hard to cure and suggest running a gummed one a lot to free it. Otherwise it is a strip and relubricate.

Worth testing for on any unserviced camera. Pro8mm checked eight used Canon 1014s and found them about two stops off on average. That is a different model, and nothing published says how the 514XL compares. And this camera gives you a real workaround the 310XL does not: meter off something known, hold the exposure lock, recompose, shoot.

The ladder has only three tungsten positions — 40, 160 and 250 — so a stock notched at anything else is read as one of them, not always the nearest. Ektachrome 64T has no position of its own, and Super8wiki reports this camera reads it as 160. This is not a repair, it is a handling procedure: correct it with the exposure lock, and shoot a test cartridge before committing to a job.

A filter that will not move either way, with the manual cancel tried as well, is a fault. Technician.

Cleanable, and there is a published guide to taking the lens out, but reassembly without recollimation can leave a camera that focuses wrongly. Pro8mm's restoration cleans and collimates the lens together. Technician unless you can collimate.