Sticky shutter! On Canon 814XL-s

[Math]

Sorry for all the questions lately, I seem to be in a super8 mood lately.

I went to a photography market today, and saw an 814XL-s for sale. Just out of interest I asked how much it cost, and he brings out a box filled with accessories and tells me 20 euro (29$) will do. I couldn't resist! He did not know if it worked..

Well, back at home I went to test it out, and it worked great, until I tested the variable shutter by closing it down. Now it stays closed! Is this a common problem or heard of?

[leadlike]

Great find! I have worked with these before-mostly because we had problems finding a reputable person to work on these. When you try to open/close the shutter, do you hear a whirring motor? That should be the camera straining to reopen to shutter. If you don't then you have a pretty simple issue with some dried lube on the linkage leading from the motor to the variable shutter. Now, the problem we had was that the moving part of the shutter had actually disengaged from the shutter drive shaft. I broke down the camera as far as removing the lens and all of the pc boards, and I still could not access the camera to repair the shutter. We wound up stripping the camera for parts, swapping its lens for an old scratched one, etc. The best we could do for the shutter was to permanently cement it to its default xl setting and disengage all switches related to that function so as to not confuse the meter. But hey! after all that, we had a beater camera that ran great! I was really happy to see it taking great pictures after so much abuse!

[Math]

Thanks! The accessories alone were worth it.
When I try to open or close it, I can't hear anything at all, as if the button just does not work. So this would be simple to fix?
I'm glad to hear you managed to get it working, it would be a shame to just dump such a lovely camera.

[leadlike]

Hey! I still have the repair manual! It's as thick as a phone book! Lemme see what it has to say about sticky shutters.....

[leadlike]

Okay, there is a discrete motor used to drive the shutter to outdoors (180 degree shutter) to closed (zero degrees). I believe there are three shutter blades to allow the three different configurations. This motor sits astride the massive drive motor that runs the film through the camera. It faces the lens and filmgate. The lens side has a large collection of reduction gears that need to be lubed. The shutter itself needs to be oiled in two places: at both ends of its drive shaft. Canon recommends plastic friendly Lozoid 72090, so no WD-40 here. Also, do not get oil on the shutter! Canon actually coated the shutter with an oil retardant to negate this.

To access the shutter, you'll need to take the body plate off of the handle side of the camera. This takes a lot of work but is doable. To get to the motor that seems frozen, you'd need to pull off the other body plate and probably take half the camera apart to put two drops of oil on these gears. Maybe you can snake your way in with a precision oiler...

From what you've described, I think your motor is frozen up on some old oil, and should be fixable. Maybe you can get lucky and smack the camera around and get that motor running long enough to return your shutter to normal (not that anybody does stuff like that....). What accessories did you get with the deal?

[Math]

Darn, that does not sounds as easy as I had hoped. I'm not to tech-savvy.
It came with the original canon chestpod II, original microphone, case, some filters and some old film, and a great metal case with foam-padding.
So if I get this correctly, the variable shutter button and the real shutter are indeed different? Because I can hear the real shutter rattle perfectly, I just can't see anything when I open the film door, the gate is just closed.

[leadlike]

Yup, your shutter should still be turning just fine when you pull the trigger. The shutter is sort of like a 3 bladed fan:
if you were facing the fan head on, in normal mode you would see just a one-bladed fan-the other two are hiding behind the first one. The other two come out to play as you switch to the 180 degree shutter to bring out a second blade, and when you close the shutter, all three blades are out, forming a solid disc.

The variable shutter movement is independent of the main drive of the camera. It will keep running through film and metering light as you film. However, all of your footage will come back blank, as the shutter has blocked off the film.

You're right in that if your camera was working properly, you'd see light flickering by the gate as the camera was filming. Another reason your gate may seem blocked: is your camera metering correctly? If it is grounded down at max aperature (f22 I think) and won't move, that can cause a similar condition. If your light meter still seems to be doing its thing when you look in the viewfinder, it should be fine. Canon made an awesome light meter aperature for these cameras that works the same way it did for their SLR lenses. As a result, you get more more pleasing picture in out of focus subjects.

[RichardB]

Gah mine has a similar problem, nobody seemed to have a clue about it when I asked around though. When the camera switch is turned to 150 degrees, or I press the close switch, I hear a whirring. The camera will not run when the closed switch is engaged, all I hear is whirring.

Interestingly, if I run the camera for about 4 or 5 seconds after changing the shutter switch, the whirring stops - and starts again when I move it back to 220 degrees. I got a test roll back after trying this and the camera did seem to expose the film correctly, although I'm still reluctant to change this switch from 220 degrees as I fear one day it may end up getting stuck - and besides, there's never enough light here to justify a 150 degree shutter with 64T anyway :lol:. The only time I've ever had a use for it was in New York using Wittner 100D, as even shooting at 24fps with the 150 degree shutter, the aperture was past f/22 and I wanted to avoid diffraction or overexposure from too small an aperture.

Its a shame this can't be fixed by a simple service, I myself tried to inspect it by taking the top cover off that holds the zoom controls. While I could almost see it happening, I couldn't access anything useful.

[Rollef]

leadlike or other members,
Do you have the repair manual for the 814XL-s available in a digital version?
Need possibly to take a dive into one of these beasts.

/Knut

[alex-rus]

I also think that it could be useful for all users of the 814/1014 cameras. It is not available in a net anywhere

[RichardB]

Bump on this very old thread!

Does anyone know of any 814XL-S/1014XL-S repair manuals still in existence?