The model

Canon 814XL-S

Canon · From May 1979

The lighter, cheaper sister of the 1014XL-S, launched in the same month, with a lens that Super8wiki rates the sharper of the two.

Format: Super 8
Made by: Canon

What it was

Canon launched the 814XL-S and the 1014XL-S together in May 1979. Same two-step shutter, same silicon meter, same film speed range, same six AA cells, with an external 9 V pack as the alternative. The lens is the obvious difference: eight times at 7 to 56mm here against ten times at 6.5 to 65mm there, taking 62mm filters rather than 72mm. It is not the only one. The 814XL-S has no lap dissolve and no superimposed display in the finder; its warnings sit outside the picture area instead. It is 100 grams lighter and 11.5mm shorter, and it cost 144,500 yen against 184,500. The 1014XL-S is the one Canon called the pinnacle of its 8mm cameras, and on specification it is. The case for the smaller camera is made on Super8wiki's 814XL-S page, which calls its 7–56mm lens sharper and lighter and the 1014 nose heavy and unwieldy with the bigger zoom. That is a reviewer's judgement, not a test result. What both cameras share is a shutter you can switch between 150 and 220 degrees. That was not new at Canon: the 814XL Electronic of 1977 already had the same pair of openings. What the XL-S pair brought beyond it was sound recording on the cartridge and far more automation around it. And both arrived at the worst possible moment. Canon halted production of its last 8mm film cameras in 1985, the same year it released what it calls the world's first integrated 8mm video camcorder. That was six years after this pair appeared.

What it is good for

Low light. f/1.4 with a 220 degree shutter you can switch in is the reason the camera exists. In-camera fades, made by sweeping the shutter closed rather than by closing the aperture. In the picture-and-sound and picture-only modes the camera stops itself when the fade-out finishes. Unattended time-lapse: the interval timer fires a frame every 1, 5, 20 or 60 seconds by itself, and there is a remote socket too. Slow motion at about 36 frames a second on silent cartridges, and single frame. Exposure that you can actually control: automatic with compensation, an AE lock for pans, and a full manual override, with the aperture shown in the finder. Critical focus, through a split-image rangefinder. Macro at both ends of the zoom. Double-system sound, through the pulse sync socket and a separate recorder. Where it falls short: the manual override is electronically coupled to the automatic exposure, so if the exposure electronics fail the manual control fails with them. There is no mechanical fallback. It is heavy — two kilos with batteries, though still lighter than the 1014XL-S. The single-system sound is dead, because striped sound film is no longer made. Its notch reader tops out at 400 tungsten, so 500T is beyond what it knows.

Troubleshooting

A red light in the finder, or it advances one frame and stops

Start here. On the 814XL-S the warning is a red LED to the right of the picture, not a word over it. Canon's manual says it glows steadily and stops the camera when the cartridge is finished, the film has jammed in the cartridge or the batteries are too low. Fresh film, six fresh cells, and it still lights, or the camera creeps forward a frame at a time: The Film Wave, which repairs these cameras, puts that down to the main drive gear. It is a real repair. See What goes wrong. A few seconds' demonstration proves little. Ask for the camera to be run on film continuously, not in short bursts.

It is completely dead

Six AA cells in the folding grip run the whole camera, meter included; an external 9 V pack is the other way to power it. Then flex the grip while the camera runs. Intermittent death when the grip moves points to the contacts between grip and body. Super8wiki's 814XL-S page records a reviewer's camera with a badly corroded battery contact.

The manual aperture does nothing

Before assuming the lever is broken, remember what it is connected to. Moving it only sends an instruction to the servo motor that also sets the automatic exposure, so the two share one point of failure. Try the camera three ways — automatic, manual, and with the AE lock set — and note which of them still moves the iris. That tells a technician more than any description of the symptoms.

The filter switch will not move

Pushing it down to the bulb position, which takes the filter out, needs the filter switch lock button held in. That catches people. Pushing it back up to the sun symbol needs no button. And remember the polarity: with a tungsten cartridge and the switch at the sun, the filter is in, for daylight; a daylight cartridge cancels it automatically. A filter in place with 500T in daylight is correct.

Twenty-four frames a second looks slightly slow

Canon's own manual says 24 fps has a slight slow-motion effect when projected at a constant speed. That is the camera, not the governor.

Every frame came back wrong

This camera reads tungsten 25 to 400 and daylight 16 to 250, so a notch limit is an unlikely explanation unless the film was faster than 400. The meter is a silicon cell rather than CdS. A reading from a handheld meter, side by side with the camera's, costs nothing and should come before any repair bill.

The lens and the finder

A torch through the lens at several zoom positions, looking for haze, fungus or separation. Then the finder: split image present and splitting cleanly, dioptre ring moving and holding.

What goes wrong, and what fixes it

Before you blame 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.

The main drive gear

This is the one that defines the model. With fresh film and fresh batteries the camera keeps showing its film warning, or moves one frame at a time, because the main internal drive gear has degraded. On this model the warning is a red LED beside the picture, and The Film Wave describes the fault on the 814XL-S as a red light. A warning that will not clear on a new cartridge is the sign. The 1014XL-S has the same weakness. The shop that sells the repair reckons the gear lasts roughly four decades, and every 814XL-S is older than that now. Treat any example without a record of the job as one that still needs it. A long continuous run on film will tell you. The fix means stripping the camera to fit a new gear, with a clean and a frame-rate calibration done at the same time; The Film Wave lists the job at $699 and quotes 12 to 14 weeks. Technician, without argument — the shop that does this work is explicit that the internal parts are fragile and that do-it-yourself often leads to more damage.

The manual override is not a mechanical bypass

On the 814XL-S the aperture control does not move the blades. It tells the servo where to put them, and it is the same servo the automatic exposure uses. So one failure in that servo or its driver takes automatic and manual out together, and there is no way to set the iris by hand around it. Have an exposure fault diagnosed by someone who checks all three modes rather than guessing which part has gone.

Light seals: less than the 35mm habit suggests, more than nothing

The Film Wave's service for the 814XL-S and 1014XL-S lists light seal replacement, so the foam round the film door is part of a proper overhaul. What is true is that the Super 8 cartridge does most of the work: it is largely light-tight and brings its own pressure plate, so a fogged roll can also come from the cartridge, its storage or processing. Check the door foam anyway. If it has crumbled or gone gummy, have it renewed with the rest of the service.

Corroded grip contacts

Power reaches the body from the six cells in the folding grip through a set of contacts, and those can corrode; Super8wiki records one 814XL-S with a badly corroded battery contact. Light corrosion on the visible contacts cleans off at home with isopropyl and a fibreglass pen. Corrosion that has wicked into the wiring means taking the grip off, and Super8wiki's disassembly guide for the sister 1014XL-S says to take the batteries out before anything else, because a short can burn out the camera's micro-controlled circuits.

A tired motor or a slow zoom

Canon rates the power zoom at about 5 seconds end to end on H and about 9 on L. A zoom much slower than that, or a drive that labours, is bench work, and it makes sense to have it looked at alongside the gear.

Exposure drift

The meter is a silicon cell rather than the CdS of older Canons such as the 814XL Electronic. That does not guarantee accuracy after more than forty years, and a fault in the servo or its circuit also shows up as wrong exposure. Bench work. In the meantime the compensation dial, one stop either way, will correct a small, consistent error.

A sticking colour conversion filter

The switch has a lock button that must be held while it is pushed down to take the filter out, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets reported as a seized filter when it is not. If it genuinely will not move with the button held, that is a strip-down. Technician.

Every one of these we list has been through the checks on this page first, and what we found is written on the listing.

Written once and kept up to date. It applies to every example of this model, not only to the one in the photograph. The facts were last checked on 23 September 2026, against the maker’s own published figures where they exist; where sources disagree, the page says so.

More like this: Super 8 cameras, or every model we have written up.

Specification

Lens — Canon Zoom C-8 7–56mm f/1.4, 16 elements in 13 groups, Spectra coating Zoom — 8x, power at two speeds (about 5 and 9 seconds) and manual Frame rates — silent cartridge 1, 9, 18, 24 fps plus instant slow motion at about 36 fps. Sound cartridge 18 and 24 fps with sound, 1 and 9 fps silent only Shutter — two selectable openings, 150 and 220 degrees Fades — automatic, by closing the variable shutter from 220 to 0 degrees Lap dissolve — none Exposure — TTL servo AE with a silicon photocell, five-blade iris, with AE lock, compensation and full manual override Metering range — ISO 400 at f/1.4 to ISO 25 at f/45 Film speeds — seven notch positions. Tungsten 25, 40, 64, 100, 160, 250, 400. Daylight 16, 25, 40, 64, 100, 160, 250 Viewfinder — single-lens reflex with split-image rangefinder, built-in eyecup and eyepiece shutter, dioptre -5 to +3. Aperture and exposure warnings above the image area and a red LED warning signal to its right, nothing superimposed Focus — manual, 1.2 m to infinity Macro — wide 240 mm, telephoto 660 mm, both from the film plane Interval timer — built in, one frame every 1, 5, 20 or 60 seconds Self-timer — built in, 10 seconds' delay then 10 or 20 seconds' filming Filter — built-in colour conversion A, cancelled automatically by a daylight cartridge Filter thread — 62 mm Sound — Canosound. Magnetic recording on Super 8 sound film, which is no longer made. Silent cartridges run normally. Pulse sync for double-system sound through an 8-pin DIN socket Power — six AA cells, in the grip, or an external 9 V pack Weight — 1,890 g body, 2,000 g with batteries Dimensions — 59.5 x 113.5 x 252.5 mm Marketed — May 1979, 144,500 yen

Here now

None here at the moment. They come through a few times a year, and this page stays up so you can find it when one does.