Are you preserving shutter life? Yes or No?

New camera's are expensive and photography is not my occupation.
When taking photos at the local parks. I'm going to limit shutter activity to a somewhat boring 24 or 36 exposures.
I will use the un-wasted saved shutter life for those once in a lifetime subjects.
I plan to work on correct camera settings, composition, and exposure and improve my results.
I'll obviously take a few more photos when traveling farther from home for vacations.
Its not my style to rapid fire the camera, stuff the computer hard drive full, then delete 90 out of 100 photos.
I prefer to take best photos possible and avoid editing new photos taken when possible. Its about how I spend my time after taking uploading photos onto the computer. Any mistakes are carefully looked at using META data. I then try to decide what camera settings or technique cause the poor image.
I'll also take a less expensive used crop camera body just for fun and better quality than pocket cameras. Sometimes the pocket cameras or my cellphone is used to simply practice composition and creative thinking.
If the dooms day comes I will have my cameras refurbished. I take excellent care of my cameras and lenses.
Hopefully extra camera parts will be available for years. I'm guessing camera production will become fully mirrorless if it isn't already.
Then the shutter assembly and possibly shutter button can be replaced in the future if needed.

Interesting question. I was brought up in a time when film was expensive and I was very frugal with my photography. But with digital I am free to experiment at no cost. However I keep in mind the longevity of the shutter and try not to over use the camera unnesseccaraly. I think it is good discipline and causes me to think about a shot rather than taking lots of rubbish photos. Whilst I am not overly concerned about shutter life span the thought is at the back of my mind.

My first SLR was a Minolta SRT201. A few years later moved to an XD5. The cost of film and processing made me shoot conservatively with not much “experimenting”. The most I ever shot in a day’s time was probably at weddings and that was only two or three 36-exp rolls. Without experimenting I feel that my learning process was reined in a large degree. When digital came along I couldn’t afford a DSLR so I moved to point-and-shoot cameras.

The point-shoot cameras introduced me to the freedom from film...but they were very much limited in manual function but I still tinkered with them...taking many more shots that I previously took with the film cameras. My education progressed a bit more but was still limited by the point and shoot cameras that I had.

Finally, around ten years ago I bought a used Canon T2i/550. Wow, wow, wow!!! That opened up an entirely new world for me...the old SLR shooting world I had missed...but in digital!!! It released me from the constraints of film, allowing me to experiment more and to try new things. I’m no pro or expert, but I will say that my photography knowledge increased dramatically once I started experimenting and shooting more. The new activity made me (and still makes me) research and study more about the how’s and why’s and so forth of cameras and photography.

I think most modern DSLR cameras are good for at least a couple of hundred thousand shutter activations. Shooting 200 frames a week would take over 19 years to get that many shutter trips. One warning, if you want to hold the shutter count to a minimum don’t ever get interested in night sky photography and buy an intervalometer.

My old T2i is still working great (and it’s been connected to an intervalometer several times). My 6D is doing great and is my daily shooter...and I’m not hesitant to walk out into the hayfield at night with it and fire off several hundred shots with it if I’m so inclined.

When I’m dead and gone, I hope my kids and grandkids find my camera equipment nice and clean and *well used and worn*.

Oh, that old SRT201...all it would take to get it shooting is take it off the shelf, put a button battery in it and and a roll of film. It was kind of obsoleted before it ever got close to wearing out.

We’ve all got our comfort zones on things and I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything...just sharing my thoughts.

Best wishes,
Ed

I have four 35mm cameras left. My very first 35mm camera is a motor drive Canon T-50 so simple and still functions.
Later that lead to my non motor drive AE-1 Program that I had refurbished.
My new Pentax K1000 body and 50mm lens was included with a photography 1989 correspondence course I took. The Pentax K1000 viewfinder is so and very bright compared to the Canon AE-1 Program. Earning just $3.65 per hour I did not have the money to switch camera brands at the time.
Around 1991 I purchased a lightly used Canon EOS 650 and 28-80mm AF lens from a magazine and had it shipped. Wow those were the days.
Later around 1996 added a Canon 75-200mm which still works fine.
Finally when the EOS 650 35mm body needed a pricey tune up. It was better to just purchase a Canon Elan II E 35mm.
My Canon EOS 30D freed me from film and developing expenses. Plus it still works like new.
I rotate my 3 DSLR camera bodies to keep their lubricants and parts working.

Brought up in the days of film, purchasing film and processing was a considerable expense, and so a camera body's shutter life was never a question. As the film size went up (going to Medium Format, and then to Large Format) each photo taken was more expensive, so there was the need to be more frugal with the shots and waste less. So while 'digital exposure is free' (with a computed $0.002 per shot cost, amortized over a shutter lifetime) I am more free to experiment and learn from those experiments, but I seldom put my digital camera into a really fast frames-per-second rate...even the intermediate rate is more than fast enough for what I need to shoot. It is not a matter of economy or shutter preservation, but simply the desire NOT to go editing thru 5 or 10 frames to select one frame I like the best.,,call it laziness on my part! I think of it as wisdom while shooting.

vision35 wrote in post #19134355
New camera's are expensive and photography is not my occupation. I picked up my last non mirrorless camera body today.
When taking photos at the local parks. I'm going to limit shutter activity to a somewhat boring 24 or 36 exposures.
I will use the un-wasted saved shutter life for those once in a lifetime subjects.
I plan to work on correct camera settings, composition, and exposure and improve my results.
I'll obviously take a few more photos when traveling farther from home for vacations.
Its not my style to rapid fire the camera, stuff the computer hard drive, full then delete 90 out of 100 photos.
I'll also take a less expensive used crop camera body just for fun and better quality than pocket cameras.
If the dooms day comes I will have my cameras refurbished. I take excellent care of my cameras and lenses.
Hopefully extra parts will be available for awhile so the shutter assembly and possibly shutter button can be replaced in the future.

Heya,

If your subject matter is not moving rapidly, you can use electronic shutter on your mirrorless and use none of your mechanical shutter, preserving actuations and lifespan of the mechanics. The electronic shutter will also handle shorter duration shutter speeds, allowing any focal-ratio in full sun light if you wish. I do this 90% of the time I'm shooting outside with my kids and general stuff, if it's not high action. When there's significant movement or action I move back to mechanical shutter. With electronic shutter you can spray all you want, take a few thousand, it doesn't use your mechanical shutter, you're just using the circuits and memory card of your choice. Don't get digital just to not use it.

Very best,

From what I’ve read replacing the shutter is not an expensive repair and I would much rather over shoot than miss out on a great shot because I was worried about the shutter life.

I don't really consider shutter actuations as one of my shooting style criteria. I have had maybe 10 digital SLRs and more than 10 film bodies with shutters and have yet to experience a failure. It happens, but not very often. Now that said, I also am not a spray and prey photographer not because of the shutter, but because I too would rather give some thought to what I'm shooting, spend a little up front planing to get what I want, then take the images. It's not unusual for me to come back from an event, like an air show, with 200 to 300 images, a family event with less than 100, or a good hike with only a dozen or so. Saves on review and processing time.

Curious, I went looking for comments from someone who had actually replaced a shutter, and this is what I found

"I've worn out a LOT of shutters, and here in Canada I've always paid $400 to have one replaced after the camera warranty runs out, but recently when I took my D3 into Nikon they told me the D3 would cost $600 to $800 for an out of warranty shutter replacement. They said the D3 shutter cost more to replace than older cameras. (Take this with a grain of salt - I'm not sure if the girl at the counter was just pushing me to buy the extended warranty.) So you might expect the D700 shutter replacement to cost more than previous cameras."

https://www.dpreview.c​om/forums/post/3264951​0

I think it depends a lot on what you're shooting - I will rarely fire off more than one frame at a time for most subjects.
Last night I fired off a series of about 20 frames of a huge Antanov cargo aircraft that I'll probably never see again - burst mode purely because was well after sunset and very dim.
Using 1/40 shutter & very high ISO ended up with about half the sequence quite blurry as I expected they would, but others quite reasonable. Bin the blurry ones & use the others.