How many actuations on a 20D?

[pierrot]

I often read posts talking about the "age" of cameras (shutter actuations).
Where do you find it?

[mvs]

I think the only way to find it is by the file # of your latest shot. And that only if you've never reset it.

[egonz]

actually, the file number isn't always accurate. I was at approx. 800 pics taken on mine when I decided to use the CF card from my wifes A70 (she'd taken about 4000 pics with it). Needless to say, my file numbering jumped about 4K.

[Andy D]

Only Canon service engineers can access the data for the actual number of actuations on a 20D. Speaking to a Canon Rep the other week, and he indicated around the 50k mark for the 20D; the 1dMkII and the 1DS mkII are around the 200k (that has been published by Canon, they haven't officially stated the number for the 20D).

[Persian-Rice]

Andy, I have read that this counter is an urban myth. But in terms of the shutter count, 50K for consumer level stuff and 200K for the pro stuff.

[Andy D]

I only picked up the reference to the service centre count from other forums, but I am not surprised if it turns out to be a myth (too cynical for my own good! ;)) I did not have much time to push the Canon reps on the count information; I was too busy drooling over the £25k+ amount of Canon gear on the table in front of us! A 1D MkII, 2 1DS MkII's, a 20D, 17-40f4L, 2 70-200f2.8L IS lenses, a 24-70f2.8L, a G6, pair of IS binoculars, a mini DV Cam-corder and one of the 3 chip CCd video cam's. I offered to test drive any of the 1 series camera's indefinitely for them, but they declined my kind offer! I don't know why? ...... :(

[Duder]

What does 50K actuations mean? the camera only lasts that long before it wears out?

[tim]

Yes.

[xdjoynerx]

and 50k is alot... p&s cameras usually have something crap out around 15k

[FlipsidE]

At 50K the camera isn't worn out. At 50K, there's a chance that you might need to replace the shutter. I believe that's around a $200 cost.

FlipsidE

[Andy D]

At 50K the camera isn't worn out. At 50K, there's a chance that you might need to replace the shutter. I believe that's around a $200 cost.

FlipsidE

I was about to day that, but the cost is around £200 this side of the pond! ;)

[Pyromaniac]

By the time you get 50k at $200 to replace the shutter it's probably upgrade time anyway. Unless your a working pro and shooting hunders of shots a day, and thousands of shots a week. then you should be using a 1Ds or 1Ds MII. Even a very serious amuture is probably only going to average at most a few hundered shots a week. At say 200 shots a week it would take almost 5 years to get to 50k.

[Dante King]

Any one know how many for the rebel?

[spoolin_photography]

hummm. camera is 6 months old and i have already taken 9000 shots, and I am only going to be taking more and more pix now that I am starting to build up a reputation for quality of my work

[Wazza]

Aww crap. 50K, hehe. I know that's just a general figure, where by that stage, the shutter could be starting to get worn out.
I've had my camera for 12 days now, and only had a lens for the last 8 days, yet have managed to do just under 5,000 shots. Only 45,000 left. Or about a years worth.
My old point and shoot, I managed 13,400 shots, before I broke it. I didn't have quite so many, due to memory card and battery limitations. Now I keep shooting, until I die. :D

[laoshen]

hehe :cool:

[Fills]

Aww crap. 50K, hehe. I know that's just a general figure, where by that stage, the shutter could be starting to get worn out.
I've had my camera for 12 days now, and only had a lens for the last 8 days, yet have managed to do just under 5,000 shots. Only 45,000 left. Or about a years worth.
My old point and shoot, I managed 13,400 shots, before I broke it. I didn't have quite so many, due to memory card and battery limitations. Now I keep shooting, until I die. :D

Wazza if you've taken 5000 shots in 8 days, I think you'd better slow down :D . Lets say you are shooting for 10 hours a day, sleep for 8, not shooting for 2, and editing your pictures for 4. This means 625 pictures a day, 62.5 pictures per hour of shooting, just over 1 per minute. I hope you are not shooting in RAW! ;)

[blinking8s]

i went from learning with the 300d which was a few thousand shots in 6 months to 10,064 in 5 months on the 20d

[Jon]

Any one know how many for the rebel?

About 50K for that too.

[FlyingPete]

I wonder if they can really tell how many shots these things can take, I have a 5 year extended warranty, at my current rate i will hot 50K well before that is up!

Then again, like anything mechanical it might still be going at 100K.

[Jon]

No-one's going to refuse to repair your camera during the warranty period because you've run out the life expectancy of the part in question, unless you do something unreasonable like hit 50K exposures in the first month (in which case they'll say that wasn't normal use). It's 1 to 5 years, not 1 to 5 years or 50K shutter actuations, whichever's first.

[Persian-Rice]

Flyingpete, you think you're stil going to be using the 20D in five years? That is like someone using.............hell a D30 isnt even 5 yet............

BTW, I took 50K with my first 10D in about 6 months, learning, shooting the **** out of anything with or without a pulse. I then sold it for dirt and got the 1DII, The 10D was awsome, no problems. My backup 10D has about 6k on it, I don't use it very much, but it's always on my shoulder. I only use it when I travel since it's not that expensive and I won't cry as much if it gets stolen.

[FlyingPete]

Flyingpete, you think you're stil going to be using the 20D in five years? That is like someone using.............hell a D30 isnt even 5 yet...........

Well my wife thinks we will :D

Would be nice to still be satisfied with it, I could make a film SLR last 5+ years, the only reason I upgraded from my EOS50 to the EOS30 was my 50 was stolen.

The only things I can think that would make me want to upgrade is higher ISO with significantly lower noise and/or more dynamic range. Resolution, frame rate focus speed etc are all fine by me, the 20D is a better camera than I am a photographer ;) so it will be a while until I learn to get the most from it.

[tim]

I said I was going to hold off upgrading the 300D until the 30D came out... well we can see now that wasn't going to happen eh? I'd upgrade for better high ISO performance or significantly higher resolution, since I like doing A1 size prints or bigger.

[tpinchback]

I am averaging around 1000-3000 shots a week. Around 25000 actuations so far. My buddy has over 200,000 actuations on his 20d with out a single problem. I would say that 50000 is a little low for the 20d life-span

[Duder]

yeah, I'm no expert but, 200 000 sounds more likely to me.

[FlyingPete]

I said I was going to hold off upgrading the 300D until the 30D came out... well we can see now that wasn't going to happen eh? I'd upgrade for better high ISO performance or significantly higher resolution, since I like doing A1 size prints or bigger.

Blowing shots up to A1 would be a definite reason for upgrading! My largest print so far is 10x15.

What are you blowing up that big? You would need a 34MP camera to produce 300dpi images at that size, but I doubt anyone would look that close!

[pradeep1]

By the time you get 50k at $200 to replace the shutter it's probably upgrade time anyway. Unless your a working pro and shooting hunders of shots a day, and thousands of shots a week. then you should be using a 1Ds or 1Ds MII. Even a very serious amuture is probably only going to average at most a few hundered shots a week. At say 200 shots a week it would take almost 5 years to get to 50k.

Then you can pawn it off at flea-bay to some unsuspecting sucker. "Camera works perfectly in all regards..." :evil:

[Jon]

My buddy has over 200,000 actuations on his 20d with out a single problem. I would say that 50000 is a little low for the 20d life-span

200,000? The camera's been out less than 6 months, so that works out to something like 50 shots an hour, 24 hours a day since it came out. When does he sleep? More to the point, when does he find time to edit them?

[tim]

Blowing shots up to A1 would be a definite reason for upgrading! My largest print so far is 10x15.

What are you blowing up that big? You would need a 34MP camera to produce 300dpi images at that size, but I doubt anyone would look that close!

This photo (http://mrwild.co.nz/PhotoGallery/2004/NewYears/slides/CRW_4701.html). On that page it looks ok, but on my wall 80cm across it's stunning. It was 96dpi, interpolated to 200dpi, then printed by some huge fancy fuji photo printer, by ImageLabs.

I'm just about to send this print (http://mrwild.co.nz/Featured/TheNight/slides/IMG_6256_CRW.html) to frogprints, they do a similar job a lot cheaper, with some fancy inkjet printer. There's a thread with a few questions in the "post processing and printing" forum if anyone wants to take look.

[Duder]

200,000? The camera's been out less than 6 months, so that works out to something like 50 shots an hour, 24 hours a day since it came out. When does he sleep? More to the point, when does he find time to edit them?

maybe he shoots sports. using 5fps it wouldn't take long to rack up a few hundred shots.

[Persian-Rice]

Duder, even at 20 fps, it's pretty hard to rack up 200K in 6 months, especially without it breaking down, that is a lot of usage for a short period of time. I am a photography student, I am shooting 4 hours a day, everyday, and I don't accumilate that many shots.

Besides, if someone is shooting 200k shots in 6 months, they probably are a self-employed pro. Any "pro" shooting sports would not be using a 20D, more likely an old 1D or the 1D MKII, both are much faster and have more accurate AF, better fps etc etc

The 20D is a consumer level camera, make no mistake about, it looks like one, it performs like one and it feels like one. 200k on any of Canons low-end stuff, as far as I know, is unheard of. The most I have seen was 80k, and his broke down at around that time too.

[Wazza]

I've managed to get so many shots, as I've been to the airport 3 times in a week, each time shooting sometimes 3-15 shots of the same aircraft during a landing approach, or taxiing past. It was also my girlfriends 21st birthday. And a few days later, her sister from England was leaving, so had to take lots of her family shots. And managed to score a sunset, as well as tonight in an hour or so I will be shooting hundreds more. :D

I've never had so much freedom in terms of shooting and shooting, not having to worry about battery life or cf cards running out. I only have to worry when I'm planning longer trips away from a computer such as from this weekend, I'm going to Australia for 10 days. And no way I can survive on 2Gb storage! (After I've just shot 11Gb in the same period)

A couple of the shots I've been shooting below:

http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/a6-ere.jpg
http://wazz*****scity.com/20d/zk-oji.jpg

I'll be looking forward to a further 193,000 shots until the 200,000 mark. :)

[Duder]

Duder, even at 20 fps, it's pretty hard to rack up 200K in 6 months, especially without it breaking down, that is a lot of usage for a short period of time. I am a photography student, I am shooting 4 hours a day, everyday, and I don't accumilate that many shots.

Besides, if someone is shooting 200k shots in 6 months, they probably are a self-employed pro. Any "pro" shooting sports would not be using a 20D, more likely an old 1D or the 1D MKII, both are much faster and have more accurate AF, better fps etc etc

The 20D is a consumer level camera, make no mistake about, it looks like one, it performs like one and it feels like one. 200k on any of Canons low-end stuff, as far as I know, is unheard of. The most I have seen was 80k, and his broke down at around that time too.

oh, I agree 200k in 6 months is excessive, but I can imagine it's entirely possible from an over-enthusiastic (amateur) sports shooter. Would pro photographers not be more discerning about when or when not to shoot than an amateur who just shoots anything and everything? I know I'm guilty of probably taking too many unneccesary shots, but I'm still learning.

[tpinchback]

He shoots wildlife and lots of it. Here is his pbase gallery.
http://www.pbase.com/dadas115/equipment

[Jon]

Yeah, but looking at all the different bodies he has/had, I'd be surprised if the count didn't inherit a few thousand here and there from CF cards out of other cameras. Check out the various threads on resetting the file numbers here and on other boards.

[Cayenne]

There is (german) software out there that will let you read the shutter count on the 20D

[Jon]

There is (german) software out there that will let you read the shutter count on the 20D

Source? So many of these reports are "well, someone I know heard . . ."; no-one's ever posted an actual link to a definitive authority who has actually used anything that does this. It wouldn't be impossible to design the shutters so that they could keep a count, but there wouldn't be any inherent value to Canon or the original purchaser in making such a feature.

[22littlereasons]

Has anyone ever worn out a 10D at 50K. What's this based upon... the Canon rep only?

[Jon]

50K is the MTBF (mean time between failures), an average of what you can expect. It's determined by engineering (specs, tests and experience with the design), and reported as a convenience to the user, not as a guarantee. So even if someone said "mine went after 30K" or "70K", it wouldn't tell you that is what you'll get from yours.

[mbze430]

There is (german) software out there that will let you read the shutter count on the 20D

I think this software you are referring to only works with the 1D series.

[Persian-Rice]

22littlereasons, never happened to me, but I have seen it twice with my classmates. I think one was 5x K, one was 6x K.

[ronmayhew]

Pardon the dumb question....

But what boob light comes on to tell you your shutter is worn out? How do you know? :confused:

I often read posts talking about the "age" of cameras (shutter actuations).
Where do you find it?

[Duder]

Pardon the dumb question....

But what boob light comes on to tell you your shutter is worn out? How do you know? :confused:

when it stops working I guess.

[mbze430]

I like to get a pair of boob lights too