As part of an ongoing project to shoot a film with a different vintage camera every month, April 2025 was the turn of a Canon AE-1 Program 35mm SLR, loaded with Kodak TMax100 black-and-white film.
This camera came to me as part of a job lot of camera equipment from a friend of a friend who was downsizing and needed the space. At first examination it seemed completely dead, even after installing a new battery, but after taking off the top cover to check for loose wires and applying power directly from a bench PSU it sprang into life. As far as I can tell it was just a dirty battery contact causing the issue. It did have the classic Canon AE1 “squeak” which I actually quite like, though it can be disconcerting because it varies from shot to shot even when the shutter speed is unchanged…
It just so happened I got this camera working just after I finished building my shutter speed tester (subject of another, as-yet-unpublished article) so it was a perfect test candidate. And in fact it was good to note that the shutter speeds were all accurate, at least within +/-0.3 EV which seems to be the standard spec. Before loading up with film I took the time to replace the light seals around the film door. I did not replace the mirror bumper as (a) that’s not so easy and (b) it looked ok.
The film I chose for this month was some TMax100 that I had bought about 5 years ago (and which had expired about 3 years ago). Internet searches suggest expired black-and-white film is still usually just fine, and I had developed another roll from this batch fairly recently.
I started off the month using the Canon FD Zoom 35-105mm 1:3.5 lens that had come with this camera. It seemed to be in working order and reasonably clean, and the ability to vary the focal length was nice after the constraint of 50mm all last month. After a few days I switched to a Sigma Super-wide II 1:2.8 24mm MC lens, then to a Canon FD 50mm 1:1.4 for a while, finishing up with a Canon FD 28mm 1:2.8 SC. As with previous months, I like the fast 50mm lens for its ability to focus accurately, but I seem to prefer slightly wider lenses for composition. The 28mm was probably my favourite from that point of view.
The shooting experience was good – Program mode seemed to make sensible decisions, and the ability to easily flip between full program mode and shutter-priority mode was good. Feels like it should also support aperture priority mode (if you set the lens to something other than A, but leave the dial on ‘Program’), but it doesn’t. Weight and balance was also good. Not sure I really liked the zoom lens (the range was nice but the ergonomics felt awkward).
Unfortunately, when I came to develop the film, disaster struck. I was using Cinestill DF96 monobath for development/fixing in a single step, which sounds like it makes things simpler but really doesn’t. In particular, the amount and style of agitation during the development process can have a dramatic impact on the development of the film, as more agitation means the fix side of the equation works faster and can outrun the development side – I think that’s what happened in this case as I was using an unfamiliar developing tank and wasn’t sure that the “twizzle-stick” agitator was engaging properly so gave it a quick swirl each time too. Also I had not twigged that TMax film needs much longer development times in DF96 than conventional film. Whatever the cause, the negatives came out EXTREMELY thin, almost certainly from under-development rather than under-exposure (as the film ID markings were also very thin). The expired film could also have played a part, I suppose, though the previous film from this batch had been fine.
Just to make sure it was not the developer having expired, I developed another film I found lying around (HP5 exposed 12 years previously) which came out ok. To confirm the camera was exposing correctly I then loaded up some fresh HP5, and shot 12 frames in each of 3 different cameras (finishing with the AE1Program) then developed immediately in conventional Ifosol 3 followed by Ilford Rapid Fixer, and the results were fine. As an aside, the developer/fixer I used were about 4 years old – so outside their recommended shelf life – but had been stored unopened. I tested them on a bit of film leader before committing the film to them, just to be sure, and they seem to be just fine. I think I’ll be using conventional developer/fixer from now on, it’s really not any harder than using the Cinestill monobath and seems a lot easier to get consistent.
When I first looked at the film straight out of the tank, I thought it was completely blank (other than the exposed leader), but after drying it there was a small amount of image available to be scanned on each frame. The thinness of the negative made for noisy images, and because I thought the film was blank I had not taken that much care washing and drying which made for some interesting marks, much more visible given the lack of signal in the image. But actually, in some cases I found the results “interesting” enough to consider them happy accidents rather than a disaster.
I had put a film through this camera partly with a view to being able to describe it as “tested and working” should I decide to sell it, and I’m still a bit undecided whether to keep it or not. Does it do anything that the A1 doesn’t? But as a prelude to possibly listing it, I decided I should take care of the squeak. A tiny fraction of a drop of oil delivered via bent hypodermic needle through one of the screw holes near the lens was enough to cure it (plenty of YouTube videos telling you how) – I know it’s not a complete CLA, and I know that spraying oil into cameras at random is NOT a good idea, but in this case it’s very targeted and the smallest possible amount. I fixed the squeak on my A1 while I was at it, using the same method.
A selection of photos from this camera below. The first 3 are from the film with the developer mishap, the rest from my test film to confirm that the camera was not at fault!
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