- Canon Shutter Count Software Free Download Mac
- Canon 6d Shutter Count Software Free Download
- Free Canon Eos Shutter Count Software
- Free Shutter Count Software For Canon
You wouldn’t buy a used car without checking how many miles were on it, and you shouldn’t buy a used DSLR without knowing how many clicks are on the shutter. Read on as we explain why the shutter count of a DSLR camera matters and how to check it.
- Method 1 – EOSInfo is a free software that can be installed on all Windows based PC computers and will provide the shutter count for any Canon DSLR except most 1D series bodies and it also won’t work with the original 5D and the 10D, 20D, 30D, 300D, 350D.
- Only specialized software that can interrogate your camera's DiGiC processor (DiGiC III and above) via a USB connection to a computer can determine your camera's true shutter count, such as this one. Of course, the Canon service center will always have its proprietary diagnostics software that will also perform the same thing.
EOSInfo is a free utility for Windows that can determine the shutter count of any recent Canon DSLR. Mac users should download 40D Shutter Count. EOSInfo supports any Canon DIGIC III or DIGIC IV camera, including the 5D Mark II, Canon 50D, Canon 450D Canon 60D, Canon 7D and newer.
Note: The techniques outlined in this article can be used to check the shutter count on mirrorless cameras, like the compact Nikon 1, as well as DSLR cameras.
Why the Shutter Count Matters
DSLR cameras, like the SLR cameras they replaced, have very few moving parts. The two largest (and most important) moving parts are the main reflex mirror (the mirror that allows you to look through the lens from the viewfinder and that swings up and out of the way when you take the photo) and the shutter. Between the two of these devices the mechanical shutter is radically more delicate and prone to failure over the life of the camera.
In the video below you can see how the mirror swings up out of the way, and the shutter opens and closes to allow light to land on the digital sensor. Watching the shutter slam open and closed in slow motion really emphasizes how much abuse such a tiny and delicate part really endures.
Practically speaking, if your camera survives the first few months without failing the electronics are solid and they will more or less last indefinitely. The shutter, however, is like the engine of a car and eventually it will reach the end of its lifecycle and fail to actuate properly. At this point the camera is rendered non-operational and you’ll either be paying for an expensive repair (easily $400-500) or if you’re a very brave do-it-yourselfer you can typically find replacement shutters on eBay for around $100 (but you’ll be responsible for taking apart your sophisticated and tiny-part-packed camera and conducting the repair yourself).
In light of how catastrophic and expensive a shutter failure is it’s worth both checking the shutter count both on cameras you own (to get a rough estimate of how much life is left in the camera) and on used cameras you’re considering purchasing (after all a premium camera at rock bottom prices isn’t such a deal if it’s 20,000 shutter cycles past the average failure point).
Let’s look at how you check the shutter count and what to do with the data you find.
How to Check the Shutter Count
There are several ways to check the shutter count of a camera and all of them rely on either having access to the camera, access to an image created by the camera, or both. Fortunately many manufacturers embed the number of shutter cycles/actuations in the EXIF data of the pictures produced with that camera so you can examine a recent photo taken with a given camera and see how many clicks are on the shutter.
Checking with CameraShutterCount.com
It’s because of the aforementioned EXIF data that the handy CameraShutterCount.com website works across so many camera models. You can upload a picture to the site, the site will read the EXIF data, and fire back not just with the shutter count but the life cycle of the camera (based on the manufacturer’s estimated shutter life for your camera model).
You can check the bottom of the main page to see if your camera manufacturer/model is listed as a confirmed working model. Even if you don’t see your camera listed it doesn’t hurt to upload a picture and try it it out.
Manually Check the EXIF Data
While the CameraShutterCount website is convenient you may be unable to use it (because your manufacturer is unsupported) or you may not wish to use it (because you don’t want to share any image data with a third party).
In such cases you can manually search the EXIF data of a sample image using a wide variety of EXIF-related tools. Use the following table to find the EXIF shutter count value name for your manufacturer; if your manufacturer isn’t listed that doesn’t mean there isn’t EXIF data but that it isn’t commonly used or widely publicized:
Manufacturer | Search String |
---|---|
Canon | “Shutter Count” or “Image Count” |
Nikon | “Shutter Count” or “Image Number” |
Pentax | “Shutter Count” or “Image Number” |
Sony | “Shutter Count” or “Image Count” |
If you already have a tool on your computer that allows you to examine EXIF data (like the popular InfranView freeware image viewer) you can open up an image and examine the data looking for the search string outlined above.
Alternatively, you can grab a copy of the cross-platform command line tool ExifTool and use it to search through the EXIF data. We prefer this method as it allows for quick string-based searching without reading over lengthy EXIF data lists (and if you’ve never looked over EXIF data before, trust us, there’s typically over a hundred entries per image file).
To use the ExifTool simply string together the Exiftool command pointed at the image file you want to analyze followed by the find command to search through the output and find the string you want. So for example, if you’re running the tool in Windows on an image named DSC_1000.jpg and you want to search for the EXIF data string “Shutter Count” you should use the following command:
Here’s what that command output looks like in real world use when the command is run on the same image we used at CameraShutterCount.com.
The benefit of using ExifTool is that even if you aren’t sure what the EXIF data string is for the shutter count on your particular camera brand/model (or if it exists at all) you can try various queries to narrow it down. If known values like “Shutter Count”, “Image Count”, or “Image Number” yield zero results you can always search for individual terms like “Count” or “Shutter” and work your way through the list.
Let’s say, for example, we didn’t know what string Nikon used for their cameras. We could use the above command and search for the string “shutter” or “count” to get all EXIF data values with those words in them like so:
The results are a little more cluttered than searching for the precise term, but if you don’t know what the precise term is it at least offers you a much shorter list (than the full EXIF data output) to comb through.
Reading Your Shutter Count Results
Knowing the shutter count is like knowing how many miles are on a car and you should act on that knowledge accordingly. If you’re shopping for a used DSLR and the sample image you request from the seller reveals the camera has a scant 500 shutter cycles on it you know you’re getting a barely used camera. If it has 500,000 shutter cycles, on the other hand, you’re getting a camera with some serious miles on it.
How serious those miles are depends heavily on both the manufacturer’s shutter lifecycle estimates and reported averages by consumer and professional photographers. You can generally hit up Google and search for your brand, model, and “shutter life cycle” or similar search terms to turn up official documentation.
It’s safe to assume that any DSLR shutter is good for at least 50,000 cycles or so. Beyond that most professional level cameras (like the Canon 5D Mark) are rated for 100,000 or more shutter cycles.
That said many cameras well outlive their rated shutter life by tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of cycles. The Camera Shutter Life Expectancy Database is a crowd-sourced database of camera shutter actuations and when the camera died (or if it is still alive). While the database carries the risk of inaccurate results (as any crowd-sourced project does) for the most part the data is pretty useful in terms of getting a general sense of how long your camera will keep on snapping away.
If you look up the stats on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, for example, the camera might be rated for 100,000 shutter actuations but the real world data gathered in the database indicates that the camera typically makes it to around 232,000 actuations and in the sample size out of 133 cameras in the 250,000-500,000 range 90% of them were still going with well worn, but functioning, shutters.
In short, if you’re worried about a climbing shutter count on a camera you already own we’d advise you to not stress about it and just save a little extra money back here or there in a rainy-day fund for the replacement camera you’ll inevitably need. If you’re buying a used camera, however, and the seller insists that it’s practically brand new when it’s rocking a shutter count of 100,000+ then you definitely want to either pass on it altogether or demand a very steep discount.
Have a pressing question about digital photography? Shoot us a message at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to answer it.
Image credits: Leticia Chamorro.
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If you read the title to this article and wondered what it means, actuations in photographic terms refers to the amount of times the shutter has been fired/cycled on a SLR or DSLR camera. So in this post I am going to teach you how to freely extract this information from a Canon DSLR camera, which happens to be information that is normally stored in real-time within most DSLR camera brands, but not so openly provided to the camera owner.
If you are wondering though why it matters how many times the shutter has been used on your camera, it is because on DSLRs the shutter is one of the few remaining components that is actually still mechanical. This means it is one element that can still wear out from steady usage over time. On some of the lower level Canon DSLR bodies, shutters are rated for as few as only 50,000 actuations before they might need to be replaced. That is not much and some people may shoot that many frames in only 1 year.
But on some of the higher level Canon DSLR bodies, like the 5D and 1D Series bodies, Canon rates them for as many as 150,000 actuations. But this doesn’t mean that this is how many actuaitons you will actually get from your shutter. Sometimes it ends up being less or more before it wears out. If you want to check your camera’s shutter life expectancy though there is a free and useful database here which provides actual user shutter data for many different DSLR models and brands.
Here are really the 2 main reasons though why you might want to know this information to begin with:
1 – If you have shot a lot with your camera already then you may want to know if your shutter may be getting close to reaching the number of actuations it is rated for. This doesn’t mean the shutter will need to be replaced at the rated amount, but if you are planning a lengthy photo trip for example, and the actuations on your camera are already very high, then it might be a good idea to replace the shutter first rather than risk a camera failure during your travels.
2 – The more important reason is because that these days people often upgrade their DSLR bodies every couple of years. Which means if you plan to sell your existing body to someone after upgrading, then almost all potential buyers are going to want to know how much use the camera has undergone before they buy it. And the same goes for you if you are planning to buy a second hand DSLR from someone else.
Canon Shutter Count Software Free Download Mac
So let’s discuss how this information can be extracted from your Canon DSLR. There are various ways, including sending your camera to Canon to have them provide you the information, but sending it to Canon may include a cost, is more time consuming, and in most cases it isn’t necessary.
Below are a number of fast, free and easy ways you can check the info yourself. 1D Series DSLR bodies are harder to check, but there is at least one method for some of these models offered below. Basically most of the other newer Canon DSLR bodies manufactured since around 2008, starting from from the Canon 5D Mark II and on down, are the easiest to check.
Method 1 – EOSInfo is a free software that can be installed on all Windows based PC computers and will provide the shutter count for any Canon DSLR except most 1D series bodies and it also won’t work with the original 5D and the 10D, 20D, 30D, 300D, 350D, and 400D. If you are a Mac user though you can install its sister program called 40D Shutter Count, which will do the same thing.
Method 2 – This one is my favorite. Magic Lantern is a free, open-source firmware add-on for Canon DSLR cameras, which provides the information on the camera’s preview screen itself within the Magic Lantern debug menu screen. No computer needed at all for this. All you need to do is download and install Magic Lantern on the memory card of your Canon camera and away you go. Again, this is not an option for any 1D series cameras I am afraid or the original 5D the 10D, 20D, 30D, 300D, 350D, and 400D because Magic Lantern will not run on any of these models. At the moment Magic Lantern supports the Canon 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III, 6D, 7D, 50D, 60D, 500D/T1i, 550D/T2i, 600D/T3i, 650D/T4i, 700D/T5i, 1100D/T3, and EOS M. And there is a beta version of Magic Lantern for the 70D available here. You can also see a full list of all Magic Lantern versions here. Below is a screen shot of Magic Lantern running on my older 5D Mark II:
Method 1 – EOSInfo is a free software that can be installed on all Windows based PC computers and will provide the shutter count for any Canon DSLR except most 1D series bodies and it also won’t work with the original 5D and the 10D, 20D, 30D, 300D, 350D, and 400D. If you are a Mac user though you can install its sister program called 40D Shutter Count, which will do the same thing.
Method 2 – This one is my favorite. Magic Lantern is a free, open-source firmware add-on for Canon DSLR cameras, which provides the information on the camera’s preview screen itself within the Magic Lantern debug menu screen. No computer needed at all for this. All you need to do is download and install Magic Lantern on the memory card of your Canon camera and away you go. Again, this is not an option for any 1D series cameras I am afraid or the original 5D the 10D, 20D, 30D, 300D, 350D, and 400D because Magic Lantern will not run on any of these models. At the moment Magic Lantern supports the Canon 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III, 6D, 7D, 50D, 60D, 500D/T1i, 550D/T2i, 600D/T3i, 650D/T4i, 700D/T5i, 1100D/T3, and EOS M. And there is a beta version of Magic Lantern for the 70D available here. You can also see a full list of all Magic Lantern versions here. Below is a screen shot of Magic Lantern running on my older 5D Mark II:
Canon 6d Shutter Count Software Free Download
Method 3 – If you have a 1D series camera the is a free option called 1D Count that you can access here, which can check the actuations for some of the 1D series cameras. It seems it will work with all older 1D Series DSLR bodies but not with the 1D/1DS Mark III or some of the 1D Series bodies newer than that. It may work though with the 1D Mark IV, the 1D X, the 1D C and the original 5D model I heard, but I can’t personally confirm which models it will work with exactly. But since it is a free software/website, there is nothing to lose by simply trying it with any of the above mentioned Canon DSLR models if you own one.
Free Canon Eos Shutter Count Software
Method 4 – This is not a completely free option, but if you happen to already own the DSLR Controller app, as I do for tethered shooting with a Canon DSLR and an Android tablet or Smartphone, then the shutter actuation info is something that is automatically provided in the DSLR Controller’s menu system already. You can purchase the App for around US$10 from the Google Play Store if you don’t have it yet. You can also see a screenshot of the info being provided by DSLR Controller for my Canon 5D Mark II on my Samsung tablet below:
Below is a list of all the Canon camera models being supported by the DSRL Controller app at the moment and I assume DSLR Controller should be able to provide shutter count information for any of the camera models that it is able to run on:
So those are the best methods for checking shutter actuations on Canon cameras that I am aware of. I just use the Magic Lantern method whenever I want to check my camera since I am always running Magic Lantern anyway and it only requires a quick check on the camera’s menu whenever I want to check it.
If perhaps you have one of the Canon bodies which isn’t supported by any of the 4 options I provided, then you can consider sending your body to a Canon service center to get the shutter count information if you really want it. There is also a website which I have not tested yet and which seems to be able to provide shutter count for many Camera brands and models. The site is called Camera Shutter Count and you can click here for it. And for Nikon users you can try the Nikon Shutter Count website, which seems to be able to check all Nikon cameras manufactured since 2005.
*UPDATE #1 / 1-March-17* It seems the website of Method 3 listed above in this article is not working at present. 1D Count’s website seems to have gone down, but I left the link there in this article in case it happens to come back online again in the future.
Free Shutter Count Software For Canon
There is a new site called ShutterCounter, which mentions 1D series cameras on its homepage. So it may either be an alternative or replacement site for 1D Count. Please click here to visit ShutterCounter. Another new site to appear is My Shutter Count here. It also seems to support various makes and models.
I haven’t tried either of these 2 newer sites yet, but, if they work for you, then please provide your feedback on them below for other users who may also be interested.
Also, if you are interested in the DSLR Controller app, (Method 4), you can check the site for an updated list of cameras it supports. At the time of writing this article in 2015 it did not support as many cameras and Android devices as it does now. It also has support now for the Canon 5D Mark IV. So the above list of cameras it supports is definitely no longer up to date. I decided not to post the current list as it may continue to change. So click here to see the most up to date list of devices and cameras it supports on the developer’s website.
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