arhphotographic

I acquired this Canon Canonet QL17 for practically nothing because the leaf shutter was non functioning.

However there appeared to be a relatively easy solution to what is a common problem with the Canonet, a sticky leaf shutter. Time to get the lens spanners out!

There is a ‘washer’ that locks the lens assembly in place that first has to come out.

With the ‘washer’ removed the lens ‘facia’ which consists of three items can be slipped out of the way, as seen below.

This just left the front lens element. This is arguably the most tense part of the operation as I didn’t want to scratch the lens.

However, I was surprised how easy, with the right tools of course, the lens element was extracted from the camera.

Using some cotton buds and lighter fuel as a solvent, I proceed to remove the oily deposit that was on the shutter blades. After a couple of efforts, the leaf shutter was finally free and actuating as it should. Yes success 🥳

Sadly the light meter doesn’t work….yet. But at least I can use the camera in manual mode along with my trusty hand held light meter.

So I put some Rollei Retro 400s in and went for a walk, reasonably confident I would have a good time. Wrong!

After just eight frames the camera appeared to malfunction. The film wind on felt as though it was jumping through the film sprocket holes and not winding the film on to the next frame.

On getting home I inspected to film and the sprocket holes were intact?? So I tried another film, a test roll from some expired colour film I had laying around. That went through without any problems. I then retried the Retro 400s which encountered the same problem, it wouldn’t wind on. You can see for yourself by clicking on the image below which will take you to a video of the whole thing.

The colour film is thicker than the Retro 400s, could this be the issue. Surely not! The whole thing is a complete mystery to me. Any help to explain or provide a solution would be much appreciated.