Canon AE-1

By the mid-seventies automatic exposure existed but was expensive. Canon's answer was not to add automation to an existing camera but to design one around a processor from the ground up: five major units and twenty minor ones, roughly three hundred fewer parts than a conventional equivalent, which is what made it cheap enough to build at volume. Canon calls it the world's first 35mm AE SLR with shutter-speed-priority metering and a central processing unit. It arrived in April 1976 at 81,000 yen with the FD 50mm f/1.4. Then Canon did the other thing. It bought time on American national television — the first Japanese camera manufacturer to do so — with commercials fronted by world-famous tennis and golf players. It sponsored Olympic coverage. By 1981 an analyst was calling the AE-1 the Chevrolet of the 35mm market, which was a remark about volume and not about prestige. Canon has never published a production figure. The serial-number estimate usually quoted is around 5.7 million, which we cannot confirm; what is safe to say is well over a million bodies, and that few cameras have introduced more people to photography. One detail that explains both its success and its faults: the top plate is electro-plated plastic, and there are plastic gears inside next to metal ones. Reviewers complained at the time. It is also why it cost what it cost. Keep it separate from the AE-1 Program, which is a different camera from April 1981 — that one adds program mode, LED readouts and interchangeable focusing screens.

A first film SLR, and it has been exactly that for fifty years. Shutter-priority automation means you pick the speed and stop thinking about the rest. Street and travel, where shutter-priority is the natural way to work. Cheap entry to the FD lens pool, which is enormous and still inexpensive. An nFD 50mm f/1.8 is the obvious first lens; the FD 50mm f/1.4 is the better one; nFD 35mm f/2 and 24mm f/2.8 for wide, FD 85mm f/1.8 and nFD 100mm f/2.8 for portraits. Feeding a mirrorless camera. FD lenses adapt to mirrorless with a plain mechanical adapter and reach infinity, which is why the glass has held its value better than the bodies. Where it falls short: it is completely battery-dependent. No battery, no camera — not one mechanical speed. Carry a spare. Shutter priority only: no aperture priority, no program. If somebody wants program, that is the AE-1 Program. If they want aperture priority, the AV-1 or the A-1. 1/1000 top speed and 1/60 flash sync are both modest. Fast film, bright sun and a fast lens will run out of shutter. No mirror lockup, and the focusing screen is not user-interchangeable. And the plastic top plate and the squeal-prone mirror governor make it less durable over the long run than the FTb.

A weak cell will still drive the film advance while being too weak to fire the shutter, which misleads people into thinking the battery is fine and the camera is broken.

Fire at 1/30, 1/60 and 1/125 in a quiet room with the lens off. A healthy body goes clack. A sick one adds a squeal or a winding-up whine as the mirror returns. Watch the mirror too: it should snap back, not drift.

From 1 second to 1/1000, and on B. A camera that winds but will not release, or releases only sometimes, has an electromagnet or a circuit problem.

White or green crust on the spring or the plate. Also the battery door itself, which is flimsy and commonly cracked or missing.

Fresh cell, ISO 100, and compare the indicated aperture against a handheld meter or a phone app, indoors and out. Then sweep from a bright window to a dark corner: the needle must move smoothly, not jump, stick or slam to one end. A needle that sits at the bottom in all light is a dead cell or a failed chip, not a calibration problem.

In the film door channels, and the foam strip above the mirror. Run a cotton bud along them. Black and sticky means they have gone.

Ten full strokes, firing each time. Even and positive, no grinding or dead spot.

Take it off, set it to f/16, and work the aperture lever on the back by hand. The blades must snap shut and snap open, instantly and dry.

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 famous one, and it is not the shutter — it is the mirror governor. The factory lubricant in the mirror-braking mechanism has dried out, and a pin turning in a hole squeals as the mirror flips. You hear it as clack-EEEK. Left alone it can progress to erratic shutter speeds and a lazy mirror return, at which point exposures become unreliable. The well-known home remedy is to remove a small trim piece near the lens mount and put one drop of oil through the hole onto the gear below. It works, it is widely done, and it is temporary. It is also genuinely disputed: plenty of experienced people vouch for it, and a former Canon technician rejects it outright and says the job needs the mirror box out and a full service. What goes wrong is over-application — too much oil migrates onto the electronics, the mirror box, or the cloth shutter curtains, and dealers report receiving cameras drenched in it. If it is done at all, the lubricant is thin watch or clock oil, one drop. Not WD-40, not 3-in-1, and not the vegetable oil one popular guide recommends, which gums up and will eventually jam the mechanism. The proper repair is the mirror box out, the governor gear train cleaned and lubricated, contacts and magnets cleaned and curtain timing reset. About two to two and a half hours of a technician's time. There is no permanent cure — it is maintenance, and it will come back as the lubricant dries again.

Canon specified a 6 volt 4G-13 mercury cell or a 6 volt alkaline from the outset, so unlike the FTb this camera has no voltage problem. The mercury type is long gone and you may find one corroding inside a camera. Fit a 6 volt 4LR44 alkaline, or better a 4SR44 silver oxide, which holds voltage more steadily. Metering is unaffected. Do not fit rechargeables. The camera is entirely electronic with no mechanical speed, so a cell that collapses under load stops it outright, and a rechargeable that has been in a drawer for two months is already halfway there.

The real battery problem. Cameras stored with a cell in for decades leak. Light surface corrosion cleans at home — white vinegar on a cotton bud, dried thoroughly, then burnished. Corrosion up the wire into the body is a technician's job. Take the cell out when the camera goes away.

Two consequences: light leaks on the film, and — worse — residue that glues the mirror up or drops crumbs onto the focusing screen. This is a proper home fix and a satisfying one. Pre-cut kits for the AE-1 are cheap and widely sold; the work is ninety per cent removing old goo with wooden toothpicks and isopropyl, and keeping solvent away from the shutter curtains.

Three documented causes. A weak battery, always test that first. Contaminated magnet faces, where an invisible oil film stops the armature releasing — technicians clean them by drawing alcohol-soaked paper between them. Or hairline cracks in the flexible circuit that runs over the pentaprism, which is diagnosed with a multimeter and repaired with jumper wires. The magnet clean is at the edge of home-doable. Board-level work on a camera this cheap is usually not worth paying for; a second body often costs less.

Two different things: real calibration drift, where the needle reads but reads wrong, and dead-stop failure, where it bottoms out regardless of light — that points at the photocell or a failed chip. The AE-1 is a poor do-it-yourself candidate here: printed circuits, and fragile tungsten wire in the meter movement that breaks easily. But a body whose meter is off by a fixed amount is still perfectly usable if you offset the ISO dial, and that is worth knowing before you write one off.

It chips and flakes around the rewind crank and the corners. Cosmetic, and not economically re-platable. A jammed film advance from a broken internal plastic part is the point at which a different body is the rational move.

Sold with the camera, but severe on this body specifically: the AE-1 sets the aperture, so blades that will not close mean every frame is shot wide open and grossly overexposed, with no warning from the meter. Test every lens as described above. The repair means opening the lens, and for most people that is a technician's job.

The FD 55mm f/1.2 AL uses thoriated glass and is mildly radioactive. Thorium decay turns the glass amber over time, which is reversible by leaving it in sunlight. It is a desirable lens, not one to avoid, but the yellowing should be disclosed.