Anyone familiar with repairing Canonet G-III QL17 ? GN coupling broke?

[keithostertag]

As some of you may know, I have been cleaning out my closet and selling stuff recently. Downsizing (sigh). Anyway, I haven't used my Canonet for maybe two or three years, it's been sitting on a shelf. Never had any problems, nice little camera, but it's gotta go since it doesn't get used. When checking it out I decided to finally fix the battery door- the bar on the door that holds it in had broken off (I imagine this is a common problem). So, I take off the camera bottom cover to do that and out drops a ... screw. A single small screw with no apparent place that's missing a screw. I think, Oh boy, this isn't good. But I can't find anything wrong with the camera, everything seems to work.

Then I found something: the GN coupling doesn't work. Unless I misunderstand, the way this should work is that when the flash is attached and on, and the shutter is set to "A" for automatic, I should see the exposure indicator needle move to the appropriate f-stop as I move the focus ring. In other words, the aperature setting is supposed to be mechanically coupled to the focus distance for correct exposure with the flash according to its Guide Number. So, evidently, the screw that fell out must be part of that coupling.

I spent some time googling, and found several sites devoted to the Canonet G-III QL17, and downloaded some pages from a repair manual with parts diagrams and exploded images. Well, I've never fooled around with taking cameras apart much and those exploded diagrams just scared me more than anything else. I can't imagine taking the camera apart, with my lack of experience, just from those diagrams.

So I thought I would just ask here if someone has experience doing this sort of repair, in hopes to get further guidance for attempting to fix this problem with the GN coupling.

Of course another explanation might be that the exposure needle is _not_ supposed to show you the aperature that has been coupled/selected: in other words, the exposure needle is working as it should and there is no indicator as to which aperature would be selected when using the flash until after you process your film.... In which case this would be a wild-goose chase anyway. So maybe one of you can confirm exactly how this should work?

I can't process any film right now... my darkroom is no longer.

Keith Ostertag

[John Koehrer]

The GN feature works by selecting the GN of your flash with the blue numbers next to the "A" Then the aperture will vary as the camera is focused.
Don't know about VF indicator.

[keithostertag]

Thanks John. As far as I understand, the blue numbers next to the "A" are GN's for flashes other than my Canonlite D- using the Canonlite D, which is designed for this camera, one should use the "A" setting (this is according to the manual).

Still, Does anyone know for certain if the exposure needle should indicate the mechanically coupled f-stop when using the flash? If someone who owns this camera and flash could check I'd appreciate it.

Keith

[mgb74]

It does on mine. The exposure needle travels from about f8 to f16 as you focus with the Canolite D on "A".

[keithostertag]

Thank you for taking the time to check for me!

[kerne]

If you need any additional help, the friendly folks over at the classic camera repair forum are always willing to help.

http://www.kyphoto.com/cgi-bin/forum/discus.cgi

[keithostertag]

I decided not to attempt taking this apart.... putting in the For Sale forum. Thanks, Keith.