Canon Canonet stuck shutter.

[charlieadeney]

Hi!
I recently perched an Original Canon Canonet (the first one with the single range finder and the leaver to bing the film on at the bottom)
iv loaded the film, and set all the different focuses and ranges, and brought it on, but when i come to use it the camera doesn't want to take. Is there anything that i might still need to do in order to release the button/shutter, or could it be that they have stuck?

thanks alot,
charlie.

 

[BrianV]

Try using it on all-manual exposure. The Canonet has a lock-out feature when on automatic, will not allow the picture to be taken if there is not enough light. If the battery is dead, no exposure.

If it does not work on manual, chances are the shutter is stuck closed. This happens a lot with these older cameras, and they need to be "Cleaned". Flood-cleaning with Lighter Fluid fixes about half of them, beyond that- they need a full clean-lube-adjust. In any case, the lens need to be disassembled to get to the shutter blades.

The original Canonet was a full-sized camera later ones from the late 1960s and 1970s were compact in size. The original full-size cameras had a weak aperture return spring, later ones corrected that problem.