Buying A Camera? Does The Amount Of Shutter Clicks Matter?

And there is me being impressed if I come home with ten pictures!
 
And there is me being impressed if I come home with ten pictures!

Now I am impressed ! When I go out shooting, it is usually something between 300 and 600 shots, and I feel SO lucky if I come home with one or two decent pictures :). I do not remember when it happened last time...
Spent half a day shooting in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, which is a great location for street photography, and all I have got is one mediocre pic and the rest was even worse than that. Should have switched to landscapes and flowers...
Ams_2016_w_157.jpg
 
I was planning on starting a thread on this subject for us full-time pros, after I read a Ken Rockwell article on why we should not buy used. While Ken makes a good point about DSLR's being consumable, doomed to be thrown on the trash heap because of obsolescence, I have to disagree with him about older an older model's usefulness. My business model was and will never be built on new, because I can buy multiple used bodies for the price of a new one, I can rent or call CPS (Canon Professional Services) and have them ship me equipment for free. In the last 13 years, not one of my bodie's(or lenses for that matter) has been purchased new - I have to go all the way back to 2003 when I bought a 20D - which means I have had to purchase older generations with a low shutter count and at least an 8 cosmetically. My measuring stick is a body could be an 8+ with less than 50% shutter life or a 6-7 with 10k actuation's and I won't buy it. While this is not a plug (and I have purchased from them) I rely heavily on the Lensrentals.com rating scale for my purchases, and this has been a big help for my purchases. From this pro's point of view, if you have the chance to score a body with low shutter count (and good cosmetically), do it!
 
My hubby bought me a used D4s with 600 actuations on it and we got it for $4,000. I would have loved to have gotten a D5s, but since I was upgrading from a D3S I just didn't need to have THAT good of a camera.

As far as buying used, almost everything I've bought has been used. :p
 
My hubby bought me a used D4s with 600 actuations on it and we got it for $4,000. I would have loved to have gotten a D5s, but since I was upgrading from a D3S I just didn't need to have THAT good of a camera.

As far as buying used, almost everything I've bought has been used. :p

Checked your website. Some wonderful wedding shots there.
 
I was planning on starting a thread on this subject for us full-time pros, after I read a Ken Rockwell article on why we should not buy used. t!

good lord, Ken Rockwell is still on the internet? should be a law or something
Anal Probe
 
Nikon would very much like to hear about any D810 they have made that has a shutter mechanism that has endured for 2 or 3 million actuations.
But, yep, replacement of the shutter is not very expensive.
However, if you paid $300 for a used DSLR that subsequently needs a $250 repair, just getting another $300 DSLR seems to be a viable alternative.

Entry-level DSLR shutters are not designed and made to last as long as the shutters in pro grade DSLRs.
Shutter life is effected by more than how many times the shutter has been actuated.
The environmental conditions a camera is used and stored in can also affect shutter life.
Exactly, I don't really mind buying a great camera used even if the shutter has lots of use, because it's fairly cheap.
I saw a Nikon D810 for 900.00 and they was selling it because the shutter failed, so even if you pay $300.00 to get it replaced, your getting a Nikon D810 for $1200.00 which is a great deal.. Pro camera's yeah it's worth it to replace the shutter, but your not going to do that for lets say a Nikon D90 or a Canon Rebel, Because a shutter replacement would cost almost as much as a new Camera with a Kit Lens.

about 6 months ago i found a Nikon D810 at a yeard sale where the guy died and his wife was selling all his camera equipment, the lady was rude because she had a price tag of $200.00 on it, and i tried to tell her this camera was worth way more then $200.00 even used, but before i could tell her she cut me off and said i don't care how much you think it's worth the price is $200.00 lol so i gave her the $200.00 and it had a 24-70 f2.8 lens on it lol, and they was 2 other lenses on the table and she was selling them for $150.00 each, they was a 80-200 f2.8 and a 10-24 f3.5 so i got all 3 lenses with the Nikon D810 for $500.00..
that was the deal of the century i thought lol, and even if the shutter was junk on that it still would have been a good deal to pay to get it replaced.
I'll Never forget that day..


haha omg. yeah quite literally the deal of the century. seemed like she was happy that her husband was gone since she was basically raffling off all his equipment
 
I've got a D300 that I bought a few years ago for $500 when they were going for around $800 on the used market. The reason I got it cheap was because it had over 200k shutter count on it from "pro" use. I've been using it for the past few years without any problems and it's still going. At the time, I figured, same as OP, "shutter replacement would even out the cost if it dies, and then it'd be like new anyway" so it was worth the cost.

That said, I got a Nikon F4 about 6 months ago, put two rolls of film through it and the shutter self-destructed.. *shrug* So even pro film cameras aren't immune.

Personally, I wouldn't get a high shutter camera unless it was a cheap deal like the one I got.
 
I'm not anal about shutter count, but if I can get a camera for $500 with 100 shutter counts or 1,000, I'll go with the lower one.

right, everything else equal I would also go with the lower shutter count
 

Most reactions

Back
Top