Contingency Plans, Concerns About an Aging Camera

Use Eoscount to find the exact shutter count. It could be way lower than you think

KirkS518 wrote in post #14775724
So my question is... why does the shutter die? Is this built-in failure by the manufacturers (all camera makes do this)? There are Canon AE-1's, Nikon EM's, Olympus OM-10's that have many many years and 'shutter activations' that are still shooting. What causes the death? My buddy shoots a Sony something or other, he's had it for 13 months, and the shutter died on him Sunday. By his estimation, he has 120k clicks.This will make all DSLRs worthless after about 10 years of use.

I don't doubt that the older SLR shutters were probably better built, but the average SLR owner didn't shoot 20/30/40k clicks a year. Who could afford the film and processing?

If you are not a Pro, you don't have to worry about it dying on you. I'd just enjoy it for the time being and start saving for an upgrade in the meanwhile.

KirkS518 -- I'm willing to bet today's cameras see a lot more actuations than an old film camera would have within the same time span. When there is no cost involved in buying and developing film, what's to stop you from taking 1,000+ pictures in a day? I easily take that many and more at weddings.

The 7D is rated for 150,000 actuations. Let's say you wanted to shoot the same amount on film. So you buy rolls of film with 36 frames each. 150,000 actuations divided by 36 comes out to 4,166.7 rolls of film.

If your film cost $5 per roll you'd spend well over $20,000 in film to take those shots, and that doesn't even count the cost to have a lab do development/processing​, or the supplies and time to do it yourself.

How people could have afforded to take that many shots on their AE-1 within the lifetime of a 7D? Very very few. Which is why most of them still work decades later.

For the $20,000 it would have cost you to shoot that many actuations on film you can buy several 7D bodies and still have many thousands of dollars left over for fancier lenses, memory cards, hard drives, etc.

I totally understand the difference ($) in film camera use and digital, that's why I took a 20 year hiatus from photography, I couldn't afford the damn film and processing lol.

My real question is - what causes the failure? Does something break? Do some part just wear out over time?

KirkS518 wrote in post #14776024
I totally understand the difference ($) in film camera use and digital, that's why I took a 20 year hiatus from photography, I couldn't afford the damn film and processing lol.

My real question is - what causes the failure? Does something break? Do some part just wear out over time?

Precision mechanical part, it wears out eventually. I agree it should last longer but what can you do...

At 120,000 shots in 13 months, you have to wonder how many shots were kept. When I first went digital I was still very conservative in the number of shots I took, a hangover from film. I did eventually become more liberal, however I still think about shots rather than machine gun everything in sight, so if my 7D is good for 150,000 on present rate of usage I will die before the shutter does, I appreciate younger photographers may outlast their shutters but tech will be outdated by then in any case.

thedge wrote in post #14776079
Precision mechanical part, it wears out eventually. I agree it should last longer but what can you do...

Pretty much..

Nothing is really forever, You cant make something that doesnt have the possibility of failure, Even if its remote, Thats why important things have redundancies, ontop of more redundancies... Things just break

If you really think about it...a shutter is a very delicate piece of machinery...it has to open a small slit, timed to fractions of a fraction of a second, and it has to do this task each and every time you press that shutter release, and its expected to last for 150k actuations as people have said here... It cant slip up, the timing cant be off, if the slightest thing gets in there and sticks to a blade it will screw the mechanism up...

Check out this video, its of a 5D Mark II firing its shutter, filmed at 2,000 FPS

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=ptfSW4eW25g

Look at how the blades shudder and shake.... You'd never see it..but thats what your camera goes through every time you pull the shutter...

artyman wrote in post #14776401
At 120,000 shots in 13 months, you have to wonder how many shots were kept. When I first went digital I was still very conservative in the number of shots I took, a hangover from film. I did eventually become more liberal, however I still think about shots rather than machine gun everything in sight, so if my 7D is good for 150,000 on present rate of usage I will die before the shutter does, I appreciate younger photographers may outlast their shutters but tech will be outdated by then in any case.

Too many birds I try to not machinegun things too badly.. the 8fps is hard to control sometimes...but sometimes, using it was the only way i got that -perfect- image

Canon 7D - Hardcore Durability Test

if yours has gone thru anything like this, then perhaps a backup will be a good idea.

Reminds me of hard drives -- it's not a matter of if they will fail, but when. With precision machinery moving at such high speeds I'm just in awe of the fact that it even works at all!

KenjiS wrote in post #14776407
Pretty much..

Nothing is really forever, You cant make something that doesnt have the possibility of failure, Even if its remote, Thats why important things have redundancies, ontop of more redundancies... Things just break

If you really think about it...a shutter is a very delicate piece of machinery...it has to open a small slit, timed to fractions of a fraction of a second, and it has to do this task each and every time you press that shutter release, and its expected to last for 150k actuations as people have said here... It cant slip up, the timing cant be off, if the slightest thing gets in there and sticks to a blade it will screw the mechanism up...

Check out this video, its of a 5D Mark II firing its shutter, filmed at 2,000 FPS

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=ptfSW4eW25g

Look at how the blades shudder and shake.... You'd never see it..but thats what your camera goes through every time you pull the shutter...

Yep...just think of your heart valves.. sort of similar. They have to flap open and closed without missing a beat (i don't want a religious tangent to start 'cuz of this, plz!),..not nearly as fast, but millions of millions(or billions) of times...but even they fail. Also, consider that they can't just glob on a big old slab of lubricant from the factory, and at service intervals.. to keep friction down, and getting over 100,000 actuations is a pretty cool feat.

Not sure of your age, KirkS518, but if you are in your 40's, you'll probably be starting to learn how many "parts" in your body don't operate as they used to.

dmnelson wrote in post #14775967
KirkS518 -- I'm willing to bet today's cameras see a lot more actuations than an old film camera would have within the same time span. When there is no cost involved in buying and developing film, what's to stop you from taking 1,000+ pictures in a day? I easily take that many and more at weddings.

The 7D is rated for 150,000 actuations. Let's say you wanted to shoot the same amount on film. So you buy rolls of film with 36 frames each. 150,000 actuations divided by 36 comes out to 4,166.7 rolls of film.

If your film cost $5 per roll you'd spend well over $20,000 in film to take those shots, and that doesn't even count the cost to have a lab do development/processing​, or the supplies and time to do it yourself.

How people could have afforded to take that many shots on their AE-1 within the lifetime of a 7D? Very very few. Which is why most of them still work decades later.

For the $20,000 it would have cost you to shoot that many actuations on film you can buy several 7D bodies and still have many thousands of dollars left over for fancier lenses, memory cards, hard drives, etc.

It's easy to get a 7D to last as long as a film camera, at least in principle. Shoot it the same way you would if you were shooting film!

Instead of blazing away with the camera and taking shots just because they might turn out nicely, carefully consider what you're shooting, how you're shooting, etc., and trip the shutter only when it looks like what's in the viewfinder is what you want your shot to look like. Just like you would with film.


Of course, that takes a certain discipline and you do risk missing some moments, so there are downsides to that approach...

KirkS518 wrote in post #14776024
My real question is - what causes the failure? Does something break? Do some part just wear out over time?

My take on it is that machine gun mode does the wearing out faster. Precision parts do warm up and that would accelerate wear?

At 75k clicks it sounds like your 7D is just getting broke in. No worries.