Canon 514XL

Canon marketed the 514XL in October 1975 at 57,500 yen, two months after the 310XL, in a year when it put out three low-light bodies in eight months. 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, not just the wide end. And, most importantly, an exposure lock. The price of all that is the lens: f/1.4 rather than f/1.0, so roughly 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 on fifty-year-old metering hardware reading modern film that happens often. A note on names, because listings get this wrong constantly. There is no such thing as a 514XL 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. They are not variants of one thing.

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. This is the affordable Canon on which you can actually override a cartridge the camera has misread, and there is a documented case of exactly that: the notch switches can read Ektachrome 64T as 160 ASA and underexpose it. Low light, a stop and a bit behind the 310XL. 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 600 millimetres working distance — genuinely unusual at this price. 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 alkaline AAs, then run it at 9 and at 18 frames a second. The pitch should halve cleanly between them. A speed selector that does not change the note means a governor or gearbox problem.

Look at a vertical edge and turn the focus ring. The two halves must shear apart and rejoin cleanly. A split image that never aligns, or aligns at the wrong distance, means the finder has been disturbed or the lens has lost collimation — and either way, that the camera has been opened before.

Power zoom wide to tele and back several times. It should travel smoothly in about eight seconds at 18 fps without hesitating or grinding. Then the manual zoom and the macro lever.

The reason to buy this camera rather than the 310XL. It must hold a reading when you recompose.

Corrosion on the springs. A torch through the lens across the whole zoom range. Tarry foam around the cartridge door.

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. A previous owner who did not know that may already have.

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 usual cause of a dead camera. Surface crust cleans off at home. Corrosion that has reached the wiring is bench work.

Home fix with self-adhesive foam, an evening's work, mostly spent removing the old adhesive.

The fault is a jammed cog or a shaft wanting lubrication. The zoom group travels further here than on the 310XL, though we know of no failure-rate data comparing the two. Technician, because the published teardown for this lens is thirteen steps and collimation is at stake.

Both are listed Canon faults. Sometimes running the camera frees it; otherwise it is a strip and relubricate.

Expect it on an unserviced camera. But 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 the nearest one. Ektachrome 64T has no position of its own and will be read as 40 or 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.

Opening the body. Technician.

Cleanable, and there is a published teardown, but reassembly without recollimation leaves a camera that focuses wrongly and never tells you. Technician unless you can collimate.