Sony A7II Shutter Count

[Meestar]

Hi all,

 

New to this forum, in the hope that someone can help solve this mystery. I recently installed PIE (Picture Information Extractor) more out of interest than anything else. But one thing this shows is the shutter count as it is held in the EXIF metadata. I have had my A7II for little over a year and was surprised to see a shutter count of around 14000. I am not a professional and do take loads of images but not that much.

 

Now I looked at a number of images taken on my holiday last year. The first image has a shutter count of 2207, the last taken 16 days later, has a count of 7535, that's 5328 shutter actuation (an average of 333/day) I also looked at the image names, the first was DCS01090, the final was DSC01758, suggesting less than 700 images taken.

 

I tried some other EXIF software, and they all come up with the same number of actuation - It just does not seem right.

 

Is perhaps ImageCount not quite what it seems? or am I missing something?

[Al Pha]

Hi all,

 

New to this forum, in the hope that someone can help solve this mystery. I recently installed PIE (Picture Information Extractor) more out of interest than anything else. But one thing this shows is the shutter count as it is held in the EXIF metadata. I have had my A7II for little over a year and was surprised to see a shutter count of around 14000. I am not a professional and do take loads of images but not that much.

 

Now I looked at a number of images taken on my holiday last year. The first image has a shutter count of 2207, the last taken 16 days later, has a count of 7535, that's 5328 shutter actuation (an average of 333/day) I also looked at the image names, the first was DCS01090, the final was DSC01758, suggesting less than 700 images taken.

 

I tried some other EXIF software, and they all come up with the same number of actuation - It just does not seem right.

 

Is perhaps ImageCount not quite what it seems? or am I missing something?

 

To get an accurate count, go to this site and follow instructions:

 

http://tools.science.si/index.php

[Guest all8]

HDR, Panorama, Electronic First Shutter ... any of those settings might impact the shutter count more than expected. 

[Meestar]

Thanks for the responses guys,

 

I have tried http://tools.science.si/index.php and it confirms the same shutter count as in the EXIF (I suspect it reads the same data) I also get the fact that things like HDR, Panorama, etc will affect shutter count, but it still seems very different to the image count, and unexpectedly high. But perhaps this accounts for it.

 

If I get a chance, I might do a test this weekend, count shutter actuation and test images at start and finish to see what the EXIF says.

[Meestar]

Hi all,

 

Just an update on this, I have done a few tests today, and shutter count and image name were keeping track on a 1:1 relationship. I then tracked image names against shutter count for every 100 images of the 5800 images taken in the last 12 months, and it does indeed look like its down to Panorama's. Looking at a panorama, I see 30-60 shutter actuations for each image (sometimes the Panorama does not work so there can be several attempts), so it seems obvious this is what is causing the drift between shutter count and image count. But have read that the A7 could have a life of 500,000 actuations. so 14,500 shutter actuations in a year gives me potentially 35 years camera life, so I can rest easy now.

[Steve C]

Shutter count never mattered in the days of film. Just how many Nikon F photomics are still operational.

Blasted digital nonsense.

[Al Pha]

Shutter count never mattered in the days of film. Just how many Nikon F photomics are still operational.

Blasted digital nonsense.

Not true! I've been shooting pro since the pre-digital (read FILM) days and even then savvy shooters were aware of and concerned about shutter count (actuations)! I'd say it was even more important then because those cameras had more moving parts. Manufacturers typically warrantied their pro-gear in the region of 300,000 to 500,000 actuations.

[Steve C]

And were conceivably better made. How did you count 500,000 shutter trips on a film camera anyway?

[Al Pha]

And were conceivably better made. How did you count 500,000 shutter trips on a film camera anyway?

How to count? Mechanically at first then electronically as film cameras were increasingly outfitted with electronic capabilities. NOTE: The counters were not available for external viewing but the manufacturers or their authorized repair agents could get to them. Because of auto winders, motor drives and large capacity film backs, film cameras could go through a lot of shutter actuations real quickly! And since they were/are not mirrorless each actuation meant that a lot of parts (shutter, mirror, etc.) were in motion! Many pros could easily shoot 10+, 36-exposure rolls at a time. That adds up to a lot of wear and tear on all-mechanical or electro-mechanical parts.