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. That means the camera maker has no control over film flatness — and at f/1.4 there is almost no depth of field to absorb the error. So when the format launched, Kodak would not guarantee that a lens as fast as f/1.4 would work at all. Canon set out to build a high-end camera for a format that had been designed for cheap ones. The lens was planned as a six-times zoom. Canon cleared the problems one by one and shipped an eight-times, and the Auto Zoom 814 of March 1967 carried what Canon calls the world's first 8x f/1.4 zoom lens on Super 8. It cost 71,000 yen, which made it the most expensive Super 8 camera Canon had sold to that point — the Auto Zoom 518 that September was 41,000, and the twelve-times Auto Zoom 1218 the following April was the same. Canon priced by lens speed and build, not by zoom range. It is all metal, it has a carrying handle on the top, and it weighs 1,720 grams, and all three of those were deliberate signals about who it was for. The 814 Electronic of March 1972 replaced it, added macro, a variable shutter and slow motion, dropped the mercury cells, and introduced the magnetic release that became standard on 8mm cameras afterwards. 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. People who have owned one for decades describe it in terms of the glass. Shooting manually. The manual aperture on this camera needs no battery at all, which makes it unusually dependable with a handheld meter — and given the meter battery situation below, that is not a consolation prize, it is the sensible way to use it. 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 the Electronic does not have one. Where it falls short: the meter needs two 1.35 volt mercury cells that have not been made for decades, and unconverted 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 and the XL-S bodies. At 1,720 grams it is heavy, though the later XL-S bodies are heavier still.

This is the most important question about this camera and it changes what it is worth.

Four fresh alkaline AAs in the grip, then 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. There are two battery test buttons on the bottom, one per circuit — use both.

It should move smoothly and the blades should follow.

In the film compartment, marked with a sun. Work it and watch the orange cast change.

This camera's own feature. It should open and close cleanly.

Corrosion in both battery chambers. A torch through the lens, front and back.

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

If you use a polarising filter on this camera it must be a circular one. A linear polariser and the beam-splitting mirrors in a reflex finder do not get along, and the result is black.

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 meter was designed around two 1.35 volt mercury cells — Canon's spec sheet rounds this to 1.3 — and mercury batteries have been off the market for decades. A 1.5 volt alkaline has the wrong voltage and the wrong discharge curve, so the meter reads wrong and the error drifts as the cell ages. There are two documented routes. Zinc-air hearing aid cells in an adapter sit close to 1.35 volts and work, but they are short-lived once the tab is pulled — a stopgap. The proper fix is a voltage regulator fitted inside so the meter runs off the camera's own AA cells, followed by recalibration; that is exactly what Pro8mm do as part of their restoration of this model, and it is a technician's job. A third route is free: ignore the meter entirely and use the manual aperture with a handheld meter, which this camera does better than most because the manual aperture needs no power at all. What to be careful of: there is no named off-the-shelf adapter for this camera that we could verify. Anyone offering one should be asked what is actually in it.

The commonest cause of a dead camera. Cleaning is a home fix; a corroded-through brass pin or a broken internal lead is soldering inside a dismantled grip.

Exercising it sometimes helps; otherwise degrease and relubricate on a bench. The repair literature is explicit: do not lubricate the cogs.

Jammed cogs or a dry shaft. Technician.

An adjustment, not a part. Technician.

Home fix.

Bench work.

There is a published disassembly for the 814 lens, and it does not cover recollimation. 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.

Ease it with a thin blade or push the hook back with a screwdriver. Home fix.