bruce_eric

<p>As a final followup to my posting, I have decided to give up on getting the paddle position corrected, because of the difficulty in getting to any of the linkages which drive the paddle. I did remove the left top cover and left prism rail, giving me a good view of the paddle, and it is rather buried in the innards of the body down below the meter. That's a region I don't think I'm qualified to enter. Besides, if I want to do match needle metering, all I need do is dial in an exposure compensation factor of -1/2 and the needle and paddle will align at the correct exposure.</p>

<p>I have gotten a test roll run through the F-1_N and the exposures (made using aperture priority mode) are right on the money. So far so good. I really didn't think this camera was salvagable, but it looks like I was wrong, and that's a good thing. Thanks for all the good input from the forum members.</p>

<p>Regards, Bruce</p>

<p>Ah, suspicion confirmed! Thanks very much for the input gentlemen. I'll now try and dig into what is going on.</p>

<p>As I recall, one of the obvious things I had to fix early on in the F-1N resurrection program was to "straighten out" that aperture coupling lever at the right side of the mirror box (as you look in from the front). It had definitely suffered quite a wrenching as part of this camera's probable swan dive off a mountain.</p>

<p>The FD Forum comes through again with valuable information. You just can't beat it.</p>

<p>Regards, Bruce</p>

<p>I recently acquired a real basket case F-1N, that had obviously taken a huge fall and subsequent tumbling. After a great deal of various minor repairs (beating bottom plate back into shape, buying a new focusing screen, and fixing multiple problems in the battered AE finder), I at least have the camera functioning again.</p>

<p>At the moment I would like to know something about the correlation of the aperture scale displayed on the right side in the viewfinder to the actual lens aperture setting. On my F-1N, for example, when the lens is set to f/2.8, the paddle/bubble is centered over f/4 on the scale. Similarly, it is one stop high all the way up and down the scale.</p>

<p>So, could some kind person take a quick peek through his F-1N viewfinder and let me know if my display is off by a stop (which I suspect is the case), or not? </p>

<p>I'm not sure how I might attack the problem, if my suspicions are confirmed, but at least I'll know what is going on.</p>

<p>Regards, Bruce</p>

<p>Thanks very much for the reply. I am going to assume that is the time for a full frame traverse (ie 36mm). My tester uses 25mm as the baseline, but its easy to convert the time you provided to my baseline.</p>

<p>Actually, I have gotten my home-brew curtain speed tester finished and with it I discovered that the Opening Curtain was running about 3 times slower than the Closing curtain. I figured that the Closing Curtain time of 12 ms. (at my baseline) was the correct time, or near it, so I adjusted the Opening curtain to the same time. This now provided me with sensible shutter speeds above 1/60th sec.</p>

<p>I'll now go back and adjust both curtains to the factory setting and see if that further improves the higher shutter speeds.</p>

<p>Thanks again, Jim.</p>

<p>Bruce</p>

<p>I've just acquired a Canon Pellix with shutter problems. From the symptoms I think one or both curtains will need speed adjustment. <br>

I am building a curtain speed tester, but I don't have the service manual to get the necessary speed spec. If anyone has the manual could you let me know the appropriate value for shutter curtain speed?<br>

Regards, Bruce Eric</p>

<p>I thought I would post a followup to let folks know how my repairs went.<br>

Both my AE-1's had very stuck hinge pins. My smallest needle-nosed pliers could grasp the pin but couldn't apply enough force to break it loose from whatever was holding it.<br>

To get around this, I first removed the door without removing the pin. I did this by using some small wire cutting pliers to cut through the "collars" that go around the hinge pin at the edges of the door. This allowed me to remove the door without moving the pin.<br>

Next I used a much huskier pair of thin-nosed pliers to first rotate the pin about its axis to see if I could free it. This worked and I was able to slide the pin upward and remove it in a downward direction, as expected.<br>

The replacement doors from US camera are a great fix for this problem, and very economical. They are not exact replicas of the Canon door and have a slightly different texture to the plastic. But you have to know what you're looking for to spot this.<br>

Regards, Bruce</p>

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<p>Gentlemen,</p>

<p>Thank you all very much for the informative answers. With that under my belt, I think I can get those two AE-1's up and barking.</p>

<p>Regards, Bruce</p>

<p>From what I've read on the net recently, the broken battery door problem with the Canon A-series cameras seems to be quite widespread. <br>

I just acquired two AE-1's (not AE-1p's) with broken doors. I thought I might try cobbling up some sort of solution, since there seems to be no replacement part on offer. However even after studying the Service Manual, I can't see how the door can be removed from the camera.<br>

Does anyone know how it comes off? And if someone knows of a source of replacement doors, that would also be welcome news.<br>

Regards, Bruce</p>