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Finally fixed a stuck shutter on a Canon AE-1 from 1978 | Camera Repairers - Free To Speak

samk77•1mo ago

Finally fixed a stuck shutter on a Canon AE-1 from 1978

Spent all of Tuesday fighting with a Canon AE-1 that came in with a shutter that would only fire at 1/4 second no matter what you set. Turns out the magnet sleeve was just slightly out of alignment, like maybe 1mm off. After three tries and some careful bending with a tiny screwdriver, it snapped right back into proper timing. Got it to fire at every speed from B to 1/1000 on the tester. Felt like a total win for a slow Tuesday in my shop in Portland. Anyone else ever had a magnet sleeve drift on these old mechanical shutters?

3 comments

3 Comments

max_brown1mo ago

Tbh my buddy in Seattle had this exact thing happen on his AE-1 last year.

gray8751mo ago

Huh, you ever actually try cleaning the contacts yourself on one of these things? I've heard that pencil eraser trick a hundred times and it never did squat for my old AE-1. Honestly, I think that's just one of those things people say online because it sounds smart. More often than not with those old Canon bodies, it's a capacitor that's gone bad after 40 years. You can clean every contact on the thing and it still wont fire because the capacitor can't hold a charge anymore. Maybe his buddy got lucky, but idk, I'd bet money it's something electrical inside the camera itself.

alicecraig1mo ago

Oh man, @max_brown, I feel that. I had a similar thing happen on my Pentax K1000 a couple years back. What finally worked for me was taking the lens off and gently cleaning the battery contacts with a pencil eraser. Also, check if the film advance lever is sticking a bit, sometimes that messes with the shutter timing. After I did that, it started firing fine again. Might be worth a shot if your buddy hasn't tried it yet.