Shuuter Life?

Nightsblood · Sep 15, 2007

Im looking at the used market and pretty sure Ive set my sights on the Canon 20D but, when buying used, whats the life of a shutter? I see some have a ton of shots, some few. Which ones should I steer away from?

Big Mike · Sep 15, 2007

There is a rated shutter life...and with digital, it's possible to shoot many many images...so I might avoid a camera that has been used extensively. However, I have yet to hear of a camera that has had it's shutter actually wear out. It is a serviceable and/or replaceable part.

Garbz · Sep 15, 2007

I've heard it. I'm going to take a rough guess but I think the shutter life would be somewhere in the 70-100k actuations. Mind you there are both lemons and gems on the market. But like Mike said the shutter is a serviceable part.

Mike Jordan · Sep 17, 2007

I wore out the shutter on my Canon D30. It only cost $180 to get a brand new one installed through Canon though. It's shutter life was somewhere around 25-30,000 shots. I believe I was at around 35,000 when it started acting up.

My 10D is rated at around 50K. I don't know what my 1DMKII is rated at but I'm sure it will still be clicking long after I'm not.

I've read that the 20D is rated around 100K shots. Most used cameras, unless they were used by a wedding or sports photographer have a good chance of having lots of shutter life left in them. What you don't know though is the condition the camera was used in... damp, rain, dusty, around the ocean, etc. Sometimes what's going on inside is harder to determine.

Mike

jstuedle · Sep 17, 2007

I have wore out the shutter on a Nikon D1H and a D1X. There shutter is rated somewhere over 100,000 frames and both had significantly more than that. I never replaced the shutter in either. The ePay price on them has gotten so cheap, I got replacements with buffer upgrades for less than the cost of fixing and upgrading the old bodies. I really think most manufacturers are conservative on the rated life of there shutters, at least Nikon seems to be.

TCimages · Sep 18, 2007

Honestly, I wouldn't be overly concerned (provided you trust the seller) because I don't think you'll find a way to validate the shutter count for a Canon 20D. To my knowledge, you have to send it to Canon because they use a proprietary software to determine the count.