Canon Auto Zoom 814

The story on this one is Canon's own, and it is better than most. In Super 8, the plate that holds the film flat sits inside the cartridge, not in the camera. Canon says this made Super 8 unsuitable for high-end cameras, and at f/1.4 there is very little depth of focus to absorb any error in where the film sits. At first, Canon says, Eastman Kodak did not guarantee a lens as fast as f/1.4. Canon set out to build a high-end Super 8 camera anyway. The lens was planned as a six-times zoom. Canon worked through the problems of film travel, focus and colour and shipped an eight-times instead, and the Auto Zoom 814 of March 1967 carried what Canon calls the world first 8x f/1.4 zoom lens. It cost 71,000 yen. The Auto Zoom 518 that September was 41,000, and the twelve-times Auto Zoom 1218 the following April was the same. On those prices, the 814's premium bought lens speed and build, not zoom range. It is all metal, it has a carrying handle on the top, and it weighs 1,720 grams. Canon says that design, with the performance, made it popular with 8mm enthusiasts. The 814 Electronic of March 1972 replaced it, added macro, a variable shutter and slow motion, dropped the mercury cells, and was the first Canon movie camera with a magnetic release. But it is the 1967 camera that solved the hard problem.

The lens and the build. Eighteen elements, f/1.4 across an eight-times range, in an all-metal body. Shooting manually. Canon's design lets you switch out the automatic exposure and set any aperture by hand, and with the meter cells as they are, using it with a handheld meter is the sensible approach rather than a consolation prize. Twelve frames a second. The 814 has 12, 18 and 24; the Electronic that replaced it dropped the 12. It is a real creative tool and a real low-light one. The eyepiece shutter, which closes off the finder so stray light cannot come back down it. On a tripod, on a long take, it matters, and Canon's specification for the Electronic does not list one. Where it falls short: the meter needs two 1.3 volt mercury cells that have not been sold for decades, and with the wrong cells its automatic exposure cannot be trusted. No macro — 1.2 metres and no closer. No slow motion, no variable shutter, no intervalometer. The film speed ladder stops at ISO 250 tungsten and 160 daylight, the same ceiling as the 310XL and 514XL and well below the 400 and 250 of the 518 SV, the 814XL-S and the 1014XL-S. At 1,720 grams it is heavy, though the later 814XL-S and 1014XL-S are heavier still.

Suspect the meter cells before the meter. This camera has two battery circuits — four AA in the grip for the drive, and two 1.3 volt mercury cells for the meter — and mercury cells have not been sold for decades. If somebody has dropped 1.5 volt alkalines into the meter compartment because they fit, the meter will read wrong and the error will drift as they age. Canon fitted a push-button battery check for each circuit. Use both. So the first question about this camera is not whether the meter works, it is whether the meter has been converted. It changes what the camera is worth.

Suspect the handle before the motor. The drive current passes from the AA contacts through a contact on the back of the handle into the body. A published repair guide for this model says oxidation is common at that handle-to-body contact. Light oxidation is a home clean-up.

It is supposed to. The orange filter stays in with a tungsten cartridge and is cancelled automatically when you load a daylight cartridge. Canon also lists a way to cancel it by hand. A filter that follows the cartridge is the camera working.

Run it at 12, 18 and 24 frames a second. The note should change cleanly at each, and it must stop the instant you release the trigger.

If you fitted a polariser, super8wiki is clear it must be a circular one on this TTL camera; a linear one ruins the result. Not a fault.

Canon lists it in the finder specification, and it should open and close cleanly. A sticky eyecup is age, not a fault.

The pulldown claw through the open door while it runs, and the cartridge drive wheel.

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.

On a 16mm camera with open spools, perished seals fog film. On the 814 the film never leaves the cartridge, which carries its own pressure plate and is largely light-tight in itself, so the door foam is a second line of defence rather than the only one. A full service will still replace foam that has turned to crumbs, and it is worth doing.

Canon's sheet lists two 1.3 volt mercury cells for the meter; the mercury chemistry actually sits at about 1.35, and it held that voltage almost flat until the cell was spent. That is what the meter was calibrated against, and mercury cells have not been sold for decades. An alkaline cell of the same size starts nearer 1.5 volts and sags as it drains, so the error keeps changing. A silver-oxide cell holds a flat 1.55 volts: steady, but still too high on its own. There are two battery routes. Zinc-air cells have a similar discharge curve but last only a few months once opened — a stopgap. Or an adapter in the PX625 size, such as the MR-9, takes a silver-oxide cell and brings its voltage down to about 1.35 volts; its maker says it uses micro-circuitry, and other adapters use a diode. The third route is free: leave the meter alone, set the aperture by hand and use a handheld meter.

The Auto Zoom 814 Electronic of March 1972 runs everything — drive and meter — off four AA cells and has no mercury cells at all. The 1967 Auto Zoom 814 on this page has both circuits. The two names are easy to confuse, and if a seller tells you this camera needs no mercury cells, one of you is looking at the wrong model.

A published repair guide for the 814 Auto names the contact between handle and body as a common place for oxidation, and a likely reason for a camera that will not run. Light oxidation on the contacts can be cleaned gently at home. If the corrosion is inside the handle itself, the same guide finds it easier to replace the handle.

Long storage leaves the grease stiff. The fix is to clean the old grease out and apply new on the bench. Do not improvise with oil: the published Canon Super 8 repair guide says gears that only meet other gears need no lubricant, and warns against automotive products.

The fault lies in the power zoom drive. The lens can still be zoomed with the manual lever in the meantime; the motor side is bench work.

Suspect the camera's take-up drive. Checking it needs the camera opened.

Bench work, and a separate question from the cells: the right voltage does not guarantee the right reading. Pro8mm reports that eight used Canon 1014s it bought and tested were off by an average of two stops, and the 814 is the older design.

A published home-repair guide to the Canon 814 lens covers taking the elements out, and it does not cover collimation. An eight-times f/1.4 zoom is unforgiving about element spacing and back focus. Do not open it at home unless you can collimate it afterwards.