Canon AE-1 not functioning - light meter?

<p>Aha! Yes, that is the washer. This is the first one I am seeing a black one. Sorry for the scare.</p>

<p>The tungsten wire is supposed to end in a notch undernearth it. Since it came out just like that, clearly the wire has been detached. I suppose you just proceed with removing the top and find out what the heck's the matter down there.</p>

<p>BTW, if the wire actually broke during some past unwinding (or was just fatigued), its end with a knot or two (used to engage it in a notch in the nylong washer), might be still around there somewhere. Take it out if you can find it.</p>

<p>Right. Hopefully it'll reinsert into the groove on the underside of the washer fairly simply, and hasn't been damaged. In fact I hope I haven't damaged anything at all, in case I want to get it to a professional to fix. It's too nice a camera to be left to the scrap heap.</p>

<p>Thanks for your help, but I'm going to leave it for now and give myself a break. I might also try to get to a hardware and find a pair of snap ring pliers. This snap ring is a real pain.</p>

<p>Couldn't resist. I got the snap ring off and so on with the whole top, and discovered that the tungsten has snapped off. I guess it's at this point that I verify that I know exactly what the tungsten wire actually does. </p>

<p>My understaning is that it simply rotates the functional resistor counter-clockwise when the user selects a faster shutter speed or a higher ASA/ISO (and a spring pulls it back to rest). Doing so presumably operates the light metre and therefore the aperture. So replacing it may not be terribly difficult nor specialist, just fiddly.</p>

<p>Also, if I remove the tungsten wire altogether (with the intention to replace it later) I can just reassemble the camera as is without causing any damage to the camera, right? Of course I would only be able to use it by metering manually, but will it work?</p>

<p>Replacing the wire is quite a straightforward and well defined task. In one of the links I provided earlier, the menu on the left has a link to exactly this procedure. Also, look at page 15 of the manual. Taken these two together, I think you will have no problem in installing a new wire.</p>

<p>You are right, it just changes the resistance in the metering circuit based on the speed and ISO selected.</p>

<p>The camera, IIRC, will work in manual mode in all speeds without the wire. You will just loose the auto mode and the metering, I suppose. In fact, if one loses just the meter (faulty coil or something), I know that the camera can still function properly since the meter is just a visual aid for the photographer (I think the functional resistor still has to work though, for auto mode to meter internally).</p>

<p>I just rang a camera repair shop that specialises in old cameras and got told that if I was the sort of person who'd consider replacing tungsten wire with fishing line, then I'm not the sort of person that should be fixing his own cameras.</p>

<p>He also confirmed that 130 bucks was about the ballpark figure to perform such a repair. I'm of the opinion that if I'm careful, I can replace the tungsten with anything and it wouldn't damage the camera any further. Then one day in the future, if another AE-1 came up on ebay for extremely cheap, I could get it to salvage parts, such as the tungsten and the pin face screw that I ended up scratching.</p>

<p>A repair shop would tell you exactly such a thing, for obvious reasons!</p>

<p>While searching for solutions to a broken tungsten wire problem in the past, I became aware of several suggestions. The ones that were reported to be working were:<br>

1. A braided fishing line (apparently it was popular till several years ago)<br>

2. Guitar string.<br>

3. Kevlar fishing line (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevlar">wikipedia link</a>)<br>

4. Dyneema line (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevlar">wikipedia link</a>)</p>

<p>The last two are the most modern materials and are probably stronger than tungsten. Reading the two materials' applications on the wikipedia links, I would expect them to be easily available in sporting goods stores. In fact, any material of high tensile strength which doesn't stretch too much can be used. So perhaps there are other choices well.</p>

<p>Worst case scenario of course has the option for you to buy a new AE-1, much much cheaper than spending $130 for the repair. However, chances are that the wire repair would go well. It is not anything terribly complicated in terms of "surgical skills" requirement. Just consult the links I already posted (I could post pictures from my own camera, but why re-invent the wheel?) and take great care in recording the order of disassembly. In fact, after removing the top, there is no other disassembly required apart from taking out the broken wire.</p>

<p>Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if the repair shop you contacted doesn't use tungsten wire itself! B-)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Yes, I found a thread on some other forum, active in the last couple of weeks in fact, with someone having the exact same problem as me. He eventually sourced some Dyneema fishing line and is satisfied with the result as it apparently has a much higher tensile strength than tungsten, and as long as it is roughly the same gauge, then it should fit fine.</p>

<p>During the call with the repair guy, I was saying that there was no intrinsic benefit to using tungsten wire above any other type of wire/line apart from the strength. His response was that Canon wouldn't have gone to the trouble of getting tungsten wire and using it in the cameras if they could have used something cheaper/more readily available. But back in the 1980s, kevlar and dyneema probably either didn't exist or were prohibitively expensive. So there's no reason (apart from being purist) not to replace it with something equally good for its purpose - especially if it's so much more common today.</p>

<p>Yes, I think it is reasonable to assume that modern materials like Kevlar and Dyneema just weren't used in consumer goods during 1976 when AE-1 was released. In fact, the '70s were, IIRC, witnessing the initial applications of these and similar materials in medicine, defence and high performance machines. Surely not economical enough at that time to be used in consumer cameras.</p>

<p>So in a way the guy is right that Canon used the best material, but he skipped to mention that economy was a major factor. That factor is not such a big deal nowadays for these materials. Anyone can go buy equipment made from these materials from a sports store these days!</p>

<p>In other words, if Canon wanted to choose a wire today, they would probably choose one of the new synthetic materials today instead of tungsten.</p>

<p>You already have sufficient references to know how to replace the wire. I would say go ahead and replace the wire with one of these. The camera was already broken, you can probably make it work like new! Just be sure to get a line of comparable thickness (or diameter or gauge).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Hi guys, I notice this thread has gone cold, however I have read it through with great interest. I have an AE-1 with an identical dysfunctional light meter. The one observation that may be some what dissimilar is that the light meter on my camera displays an odd tendency at ISO 3200, when the TV is set to 15/1 it appears to be sensitive to light and dark, whereas at 30/1 second it shoots up to indicate overexposure for all faster TV variations thereafter. Something must be occurring with the contacts perhaps?</p>

<p>I plan to document my attempt to repair the camera, I haven't got much mechanical expertise, however as already stated, it is such a shame to let these cameras fall by the wayside so I'll give it a shot.</p>

<p> </p>