Canon F-1N Motor Drive Questions

Has anyone rebuilt either of the NiCad battery packs for the AE Motor Drive FN? I am interested in replacing the non-working NiCad cells with newer NiMh cells.Would the charger work properly with the NiMh cells? Where would I look to find a repair manual for the NiCad battery packs?

No. NiMh neccesitate a different charge control than NiCd cells.

Can the charger be modified to accommodate the difference?

dynachrome said:

Has anyone rebuilt either of the NiCad battery packs for the AE Motor Drive FN? I am interested in replacing the non-working NiCad cells with newer NiMh cells.Would the charger work properly with the NiMh cells? Where would I look to find a repair manual for the NiCad battery packs?

Click to expand...

I rebuilt the NiCad pack for the Nikon F3 motor drive MD-4. I used the original charger works fine. Not ideal but OK. The NiMH last significantly longer. The difficult is to open up the pack.

I think my MD-4 has the AA battery holder. I haven't looked at it in a while. The Canon battery pack (on it's way to me) seems to be held together with screws. I suppose an alternative would be to either fabricate a pack which fits removable batteries or adjust the electronics of the regular AA pack so that removable AA NiMh batteries could be used. Now that I have tried the motor drive with AA alkaline batteries I'm thinking about replacing them with AA lithium batteries to save weight.

If you’re talking about the Motor Drive FN for the New F-1, I had the Ni-Cd pack, and when it no longer held a charge, decided it was easier just to get the AA battery pack and use rechargeable batteries. I sold the Ni-Cd pack for parts to someone willing to deal with rebuilding it. Years after the camera was out of production, I was able to find a brand new battery pack at the notorious Cambridge Camera. They had a stack of them. I walked in the store and bought it over the counter, so I knew I was getting what I paid for.

Yes. It's the pack for the Motor Drive FN. The manual states that NiCads should not be used in the AA battery pack. I don't think there were NiMh batteries in 1981 when the New F-1 came out. What's the danger of using, for example, NiMh AA batteries in the regular AA battery holder? The New F-1 with the motor drive, AA pack and 28-90/2.8-3.5 Vivitar Series 1 is really heavy.

dynachrome said:

I think my MD-4 has the AA battery holder. I haven't looked at it in a while. The Canon battery pack (on it's way to me) seems to be held together with screws. I suppose an alternative would be to either fabricate a pack which fits removable batteries or adjust the electronics of the regular AA pack so that removable AA NiMh batteries could be used. Now that I have tried the motor drive with AA alkaline batteries I'm thinking about replacing them with AA lithium batteries to save weight.

Click to expand...

There is the MN-2 NiCad pack for the MD-4 instead of the standard 8 AA holder. The reason I want to use it because the MD-4 can only get to 5.6 fps with it. With 8 AA it can only get to 3.8 fps. The pack has 14 NiCad cells inside.

dynachrome said:

Yes. It's the pack for the Motor Drive FN. The manual states that NiCads should not be used in the AA battery pack. I don't think there were NiMh batteries in 1981 when the New F-1 came out. What's the danger of using, for example, NiMh AA batteries in the regular AA battery holder? The New F-1 with the motor drive, AA pack and 28-90/2.8-3.5 Vivitar Series 1 is really heavy.

Click to expand...

Good question. If there is a danger with NiMh batteries, I’d think it would be overheating, if it draws enough current. And yes, the AA pack with 12 batteries is kind of absurdly heavy.

dynachrome said:

What's the danger of using, for example, NiMh AA batteries in the regular AA battery holder?

Click to expand...

No danger, that is why David hinted at such,.

In general though, as NiMh cells have lower voltage, there might be a voltage problem.

I‘ve just rebuilt mine.
Take care to find the three chrome coloured screws. 2 underneath the leatherette - yes it is leatherette even though it doesn’t look like, and one on top besides the stick to connect the battery pack to the body. I didn’t find them all and ripped the screw holders.

That didn’t matter anyway, since the replacement cells I used were too large and I had to hold the cover in place with electric tape.

I use the original charger with no problems so far, but it doesn’t change to green, even after charging for 24 hours.

You need to unscrew the metal plate at the top which sits under the ergonomically shaped handle and reflects the handle‘s shape. 2 black screws.

Underneath there are some cables. Take a picture of their positions and desolder the red. There are two black cables, desolder the one located closer to the Center of the board.

No worries about pulling them out together with the batteries, you should replace them with new and longer ones so that you can install the cables first, solder them to the battery pack and pull them gently while inserting the new battery pack. Cut them to length before soldering.

The only problem about voltage differences should be, that the charger doesn’t detect fully charged voltage. But since the internal electronics of the camera are normally supplied through another battery behind the handle, the only drawback might be reduced torque from the electric motors.

Maybe some day I might write a step by step instructions including pictures on my blog. If so, I will link it here.

Edit: I just noticed, that using the power winder now doesn’t support shutter priority AE any more. But I can‘t recall, if it worked before I replaced the cells.
What I can say for sure is, that using my Motor Drive shutter priority does work as intended, so it is not a fault inside the camera itself.
But maybe I have contact problems after desoldering the power pack’s mainboard.

dynachrome said:

I think my MD-4 has the AA battery holder. I haven't looked at it in a while. The Canon battery pack (on it's way to me) seems to be held together with screws. I suppose an alternative would be to either fabricate a pack which fits removable batteries or adjust the electronics of the regular AA pack so that removable AA NiMh batteries could be used. Now that I have tried the motor drive with AA alkaline batteries I'm thinking about replacing them with AA lithium batteries to save weight.

Click to expand...

Hey, I am thinking of buying the Canon Motor Drive with the battery pack and use removable AA NiMh batteries. Since you've made the post awhile back, I wanted your feedback. Did you ever get to use your power winder with the NiMh batteries? Were there any issues? Only thing that worries me is that the instruction strongly recommends against using AA NiCd batteries, so I was hoping that this wouldn't apply to NiMh ones.
Thanks!

Did you speak of the Motor Drive FN or of the Power Winder FN?

As for the latter: I have just tried to make it work with four AA NiMH batteries with 1,27 Volts each. It didn't work, not even the shutter priority auto exposure function.
Sorry to say. I suppose those 1,27 Volts are just too weak.

1957ExaktaVarexIIa said:

Did you speak of the Motor Drive FN or of the Power Winder FN?

As for the latter: I have just tried to make it work with four AA NiMH batteries with 1,27 Volts each. It didn't work, not even the shutter priority auto exposure function.
Sorry to say. I suppose those 1,27 Volts are just too weak.

Click to expand...

I’m talking about the Motor Drive. Mine just reached from Japan, I was planning to break the bank and buy some NiMh, this beast takes 12 AAs!!! But after your message, I’m not so sure now, I might have to settle for the standard lithium ones. Although I am a bit surprised by your case, because the manual for the Motor Drive strongly recommends against using rechargeable NiCd batteries (they didn’t have the NiMh back then yet), but in the case of the Power Winder, the manual says that using NiCd batteries should be fine. So I am not exactly sure what could be the issue in your case

abraxamovic said:

I’m talking about the Motor Drive. Mine just reached from Japan, I was planning to break the bank and buy some NiMh, this beast takes 12 AAs!!! But after your message, I’m not so sure now, I might have to settle for the standard lithium ones. Although I am a bit surprised by your case, because the manual for the Motor Drive strongly recommends against using rechargeable NiCd batteries (they didn’t have the NiMh back then yet), but in the case of the Power Winder, the manual says that using NiCd batteries should be fine. So I am not exactly sure what could be the issue in your case

Click to expand...

If your motor drive takes alkaline then I just use alkaline. Although 12 batteries is a lot but it would last a long time. Your cost of film would be a lot when you use up a set of batteries. If you really want rechargeable use Lithium-Ion AA rechargeables they provide constant 1.5V each until the battery is exhausted.

Chan Tran said:

If your motor drive takes alkaline then I just use alkaline. Although 12 batteries is a lot but it would last a long time. Your cost of film would be a lot when you use up a set of batteries. If you really want rechargeable use Lithium-Ion AA rechargeables they provide constant 1.5V each until the battery is exhausted.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I ended up deciding against using NiMH batteries. After doing some research online, I found out that the AA pack is designed to expect an 18V under load from a good set of standard 1.5V AAs, and the 14.4V of a fresh set of 1.2V rechargeables look like worn out alkalines to the battery pack circuitry, which could potentially prevent the shutter priority feature from working or the whole motor drive altogether. Not only that, but there’s also a chance of overheating, which might ruin the internal circuitry. I didn’t want to deal with all that hassle, so I decided to not take the risk.

Sourcing 1.5V Li-ion rechargeables as you suggested seems like a pain in the ass, so I opted for just using the standard ones.

Actually, I found an even better option than alkaline batteries… lithium! A set of 12 lithium AA batteries weigh only 180g, compared to 300g for a dozen alkaline ones. Lithiums last up to 6 times longer, which means the battery pack should ideally shoot way more than the approximate threshold mentioned in the instructions manual of 50 rolls of film (which’s a lot of film already!), if carbon zinc batteries are used, which itself lasts less than alkaline. Also lithium batteries operate much better at colder temperatures vs alkalines. A good tip btw if you want to use the New F-1 itself in extreme cold, is to use the 28L/L544 (lithium) battery for the camera vs the more common alkaline equivalent 4LR44/28A/A544 (alkaline). I think only Duracell commonly makes those, but anyway that’s besides the point