Hammy
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Upload & Sell: Off
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 p.1 #17 · how to know accurate shutter releases? | |
Kinda nice that I sparked some intelligent thought on this thread.... all good points.
For me, my camera(s) are tools - like a shovel, like a screwdriver - a tool that allows me to get my job done... present pictures to customers. A car to me is similar - difference is, that a car doesn't make me money like my camera does. Most people care about cars more than their spouse - I buy them used, change the oil every 5-10K and use them until they die (cars, not spouses)
How many people here watch the odometer and change the oil every 3,000 like the manufacturer wants you to? How many dread the day the odometer hits over 60,000 and it is out of warranty? When its out of warranty (or just before) do you go out and get a new car? Some people I'm sure do, and they'll be worried about their shutter count.
I understand Ahrens reason for wanting to know shutter count - for selling - kinda like mucking with the odometer if you were selling a car.
But I certainly wouldn't have the calulator out figuring out the revolutions of the hard drive - anticipating its death. Similarily, I don't worry about the actuation on my cameras. The first time I realized my high shutter count was when a friend had a bet among 10 photographers - who had the highest shutter count. With the newest camera of the bunch (4 month old MarkII-N), I won with around 327,000 clicks - WELL past the rated life of 200,000. And yet, I still didn't think about it for another 150,000 clicks - I only sent it in 'pre-emtively' because I had time to send it in. I could have guessed at what shutter count was on there - and be within 30-40K, counting all the times I used it and knowing how many times the shutter rolled or simply looking up on my file server the number of images with my camera number.
Brad has some good points - as I do have backups - so that easily allows me to not worry about it. Again, its a tool - like having another shovel if my first one breaks while digging a ditch. Most people think that it might be excessive to have $4,000 backup bodies, but when its the tool that makes my salary, its worth it.
So while it is good to know how many spoons are in the drawer, I don't think anybody is going to go out and buy a whole 'nother set of exactly matching spoons for one meal just because you are one spoon shy - nor would you cancel an invitation - you would simply make do and it wouldn't really suck.
As for what I do - taking lots of pictures... I own and run an event photography company. We roll nationwide shooting mostly cheer competitions - big ones. Up to 8,000 competitors per day so far, but its at some smaller ones that only have one stage of 3500 competitors that makes for a long day of shooting. Squads are sized from 6-42 - average of 20 - and they compete for 2 minutes every 4 minutes. With each shooter getting an average of 80-120 shots per squad - with 150 squads, that comes out to an average of 15,000 shots per day per shooter - and I have at least 3 cameras going per stage. Our largest show netted 181,000+ images in two days. The images are downloaded, processed and published to viewstations (up to 101 so far) within seconds of the squad leaving the stage. For the customers, they can find pix in 1-2 clicks at our booth.
The servers I use are massively redundant - with multiple Gbit NICs, 4 CPUs, 8 hard drives in RAID1 and RAID10 arrays with hot spares. And I have two of these servers so that I don't have to worry about spindle count. I've had several drives fail over the years, but the RAID controller just picks up the hot spare and keeps the show going. If I had a massive failure in any server, I just swap on cable over and my show keeps downloading and selling.
Sorry to raise any blood pressure in the converstation - I guess I've just gotten numb to even thinking about shutter count and was trying to assure all that its really ok that you don't know about the accuations - like Kamil said, it was a rare camera that let you find out shutter actuations on a film camera. After talking with some higher ups at Canon, they said that film cameras would take about a decade to reach that count and even most digitals don't come close to reaching their shutter life in their normal product cycle (2 years)
With my experience - I've come to not be concerned about shutter count - if its working for me, then great. A shutter can fail at any time, but most shooters don't deliver the kind of abuse that I put mine through. There is always the novelty of wanting to know what kind of 'mileage' your body has for selling and maintenance - but overall, I don't think the limitation would be classified as "sucks"
Hammy.
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