Canon Dial 35 Questions...

Harlequin565

Harlequin565

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Ian
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We had a Canon Dial 35 come through our charity shop last week, and I brought it home to test it... Never having used one before I don't know if it's broken or not. I did have a look at the online manual and couldn't find an answer to the questions below. The rest of the camera operation seems straightforward. Paging @StephenM as he mentioned he had one :)

Batteries... They take mercury batteries, so I went to YouTube and saw that people use LR44 batteries as a replacement (but the meter is out usually). I tried the trick of putting one battery in, and putting another one on its side to make the connection to the arm that goes across, but when I look through the viewfinder, the meter needle that shows aperture doesn't move. When I put the camera into "manual mode" by pulling out the button next to the lens, and twirling it, the aperture needle moves correctly, but drops back to that power symbol on the left hand side when I push the button back in to go "auto". Is there some sort of behaviour I can look for to determine whether the battery is good or not (or whether my heath robinson attempts have worked)?

I haven't loaded any film yet as I intend to bulk roll a couple of very short rolls to test it, but the aperture is open. With the back off, you can see through the lens. Do you know if this is normal behaviour for an unloaded camera? Will the aperture close when I load film and cock the shutter? My research seems to indicate that once film is in, you need to wind the knob to advance the film, then continue to wind the knob to charge the shutter and get the spring wound so I don't know if the aperture is stuck. I'm assuming it's a leaf shutter as I can't see an obvious shutter curtain.

Side note, this is a lovely little half frame camera and is the first one I've come across that is more ergonomic for left eye dominant shooters!

Thanks in advance!
 
Just spotted this. I'll take a look at mine. From memory, they were made to take PX13 batteries, like a lot of my equipment, and as a result I have a few adapters from a company in the States to let me use silver cells. - so I don't have a voltage problem with the replacement batteries.

I agree about them being a lovely camera, although the built in winder makes them larger than most half frames.
 
StephenM said:
I have a few adapters from a company in the States to let me use silver cells
Click to expand...
Thanks Stephen.

I bought an adapter off eBay that's supposed to be correctly sized. Just taken a few shots with it now that it has film in it, and the shutter/aperture seems to be behaving correctly in "manual" mode. When I get the adapter I'll try again on auto to see if that works.
 
It is something of a rarity. Ours is actually badged "Bell and Howell" indicating it was intended to be sold in the USA. We bought it from (probably) Fox Talbot (anyone remember them?) just after it was discontinued.

The weak point of the design is having to open the back and fog any film there to change the battery. Or do it in a darkroom...
 
StephenM said:
It is something of a rarity. Ours is actually badged "Bell and Howell" indicating it was intended to be sold in the USA. We bought it from (probably) Fox Talbot (anyone remember them?) just after it was discontinued.

The weak point of the design is having to open the back and fog any film there to change the battery. Or do it in a darkroom...
Click to expand...
Isn't the Bell & Howell badged one actually the Dial-2?
 
Any further news on this? I haven't replied before as it seemed you were OK subject to what happened on auto and film coming back...
 
I got it working Stephen. Put a roll of film through it to test it on manual without the battery and it was fine.
Put a battery in and the exposures were all heavily over exposed indicating to me that the aperture didn't auto adjust and sat at 2.8. No needle movement either which suggests either I cocked up the battery connection (I used foil to stack the battery and hold it in place) or the electronics are dead. Works great as a manual camera but not on automatic.

2024-07-14-foma400-dial35-40.jpg

Focus was a bit iffy, but I did get a couple of shots that were sharp indicating user error rather than camera fault. Half frame is just too small for me to scan anything usable. I suspect Nige could make it work, but not me. The above is on Foma 400 which I used for functional testing, and the grain - even from DDX, is quite chunky. I'm assuming this is down to the enlargement of such a small piece of negative.

Very cool camera, and great for a left-eye dominant photographer like me. Love the auto advance and rewind. It'll make a nice pocket compact for someone and is going on eBay for the charity on Sunday.
 
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