Shutter life: how many frames is ok for an SLR?

skorpiius · Sep 26, 2017

shutterfinger said:
Back when I bought my F4 new I was told that Nikon guaranteed their shutters for 50,000 trip cycles for amateur/user cameras and 100,000 trip cycles for pro level cameras.
Such technical information has been removed from current web sites.

Where we're going we don't need current web sites

https://web.archive.org/web/2000012...om:80/products/feature.cfm?id=130&feature=105

150,000 Nikon F5

RalphLambrecht · Sep 26, 2017

E. von Hoegh said:
Zeiss Ikon claimed the prewar Contax shutter was good for 400,000 cycles. In 1936.

the only one ever failing on me was on a brand-new East-German Raktica after one week .

MartinCrabtree · Sep 27, 2017

There are stories about pro level Nikons going upwards of 500,000. Doubtful I'll take that many but nice to know it can.

vsyrek1945 · Sep 27, 2017

MartinCrabtree said:
There are stories about pro level Nikons going upwards of 500,000. Doubtful I'll take that many but nice to know it can.

I bought a used Nikon D200 a few years back on eBay from a west coast pro who claimed to have put 150,000 on its shutter with annual service by Nikon. The claim of regular service convinced me to put in a bid, and the claimed shutter count kept the bidding down, so I got a bargain D200. It looked like new and worked perfectly,, and it reported a shutter count of over 250,000 when I got around to reading out the EXIF data. I brought up the 250K total to a Nikon rep at a Photoplus Expo, thinking maybe I had a record-setting unit, and he claimed a D200 at Nikon's HQ had over 1.4 million on its shutter.

I put another few thousand on it before selling it off after getting a D7000. For all I know, that D200 is still working flawlessly. Go figure.

Sirius Glass · Sep 27, 2017

I will never take many tens of thousands of photographs with any of my cameras including the beloved Hasselblad. I fact I doubt that I will ever take 150,000 photographs with all my cameras in my life. After life, I have no idea how many photographs I will take.

jim10219 · Sep 27, 2017

I've got a few 100+ year old shutters that are still pretty reliable. All I had to do was clean out the old oil and re-lubricate them.

On the flip side, I bought a much more recently made Pentax ZX-50 that only had about 20 rolls of film ran through it before the original battery died and the original owner threw it in the closet and gave up on it. I bought it from him last year, replaced the battery, took one photograph with it, and the shutter broke. It's not anywhere near worth fixing either.

So it depends on the camera.

faberryman · Sep 27, 2017

With a film camera, how are you going to know how many times you have tripped the shutter anyway?

skorpiius · Sep 27, 2017

I can't imagine that more than 1 or 2% of film camera shutters will exceed their usage life.

vlasta · Sep 28, 2017

faberryman said:
With a film camera, how are you going to know how many times you have tripped the shutter anyway?

On some newer Nikon cameras, F4 / F5 / F6 it is possible to extract that information. For F4 and F5, as I witnessed, only in service.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 29, 2017

MartinCrabtree said:
There are stories about pro level Nikons going upwards of 500,000. Doubtful I'll take that many but nice to know it can.

I bought used Nikon FMs from a professional catalog photographer who told me that he always sold his at around one Million shots to get new ones because, his started total around that number. I added well over 100k without shutters ever failing on me. They are now all well over 30 years old and ticking. But if you buy sed from a pro, be aware that they could be well worn.

GRHazelton · Sep 30, 2017

Leigh B said:
The reason they make such a claim is they don't know what they're doing.
You have to understand the action and shoot at the peak, to minimize subject motion.

50 years ago I was shooting basketball with a 4x5 press camera (no flash).
I got excellent results, and nobody could figure out how I did it.
I was shooting Kodak Super XX and developing in Acufine to get an astronomical speed.

- Leigh

I remember shooting my high school baseball games with a 35 mm leaf shutter rangefinder. No motor, of course. Timing is the trick, and anticipating the action, and ... luck! I remember one shot of a batter, mid swing, the ball is just above the bat, obviously a strike, both are a little blurred, but the batter's grimace is crystal clear, and makes the shot! I hope I can still find it.

Sirius Glass · Sep 30, 2017

GRHazelton said:
I remember shooting my high school baseball games with a 35 mm leaf shutter rangefinder. No motor, of course. Timing is the trick, and anticipating the action, and ... luck! I remember one shot of a batter, mid swing, the ball is just above the bat, obviously a strike, both are a little blurred, but the batter's grimace is crystal clear, and makes the shot! I hope I can still find it.

That is what make photography fun, not the peeing photographs all over the place machine gun style.

fstop · Oct 1, 2017

faberryman said:
With a film camera, how are you going to know how many times you have tripped the shutter anyway?

Take the number of developed negs/slides and multiply by 25. Most people will fire the shutter multiple times loading film, playing with it etc much more than talking/making pictures, From polling users we estimated the number to be 25 times more than actual image making.

guangong · Oct 1, 2017

As noted, it all depends. It depends on the quality of materials and the degree of tolerances and finishing of internal working parts. As would be expected high quality camera shutters in Leicas, Nikons, Hasselblads, Rolleiflex, Contax, etc will last a lot longer than from low end cameras. My 81 year old IIIa shutter is going strong, my very early IIIc (one of first 100 made after war) finally needed adjustment, my early 1960s Nikon F has never had a problem. Somebody noted that Zeiss put more chrome on the inside of their better cameras than many manufacturers put on the outside. All this adds to shutter longevity. In general, when these cameras were made competition in the market was tough and you got what you paid for.

E. von Hoegh · Oct 7, 2017

RalphLambrecht said:
the only one ever failing on me was on a brand-new East-German Raktica after one week .

It seems that they either self destruct pretty quickly, or go on forever. I was given a boxful of cameras and bodies, the only one working as it should was a Prakctica LTL3 - shutter, meter, etc. all works well. It's fun to use with a Helios 44-3 from one of the not-working Zenits.

Shutter life: how many frames is ok for an SLR?

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