Canon A-1 (black) [1978]

Well it turns out when I bought my Yashica Mat 124G, the seller was cleaning out for a move.  She also had a Canon A-1 (black) and an AE-1 (silver, NOT program) for sale on the cheap, along with stock 1.8 primes and a large pile of off brand lenses.

This is my first A-1 and is actually quite an interesting beast.  Like the rest of the A series it is electro-mechanical and does almost nothing without a standard 6v PX28L battery installed.  The camera appeared fairly clean, although someone has stored it with the lens off, and no body cap on… thus there was a fair amount of loose dust inside.  But nothing major.

Repairs

Unfortunately when I bought the camera the rewind cap and lever had fallen off of the camera.  Luckily it was loose in the camera bag.  The listing photos the seller had posted online clearly showed the rewind cap still intact, so it must have just come off.  After a bit of research it turns out that the A1 rewind lever is very different from the other A series rewind cranks.  Its actually far easier to replace.  I just needed some needle nose pliers to gently life the end of the center post up, and screw it back into the cap.  Since this seems to be a reasonably common problem detailed online, I used a tiny dot of LocTite to keep the cap in place.

Gallery