Broken Shutter, Broken Heart
It finally happened... I blew my first shutter yesterday at the Cubs-Pirates game. For all you photography newbies out there, the shutter controls when light enters the camera and for how long. That click-click sound you hear whenever you take a picture? That is the shutter opening and closing.
As with any other piece of technology, you use it enough, it will wear down and break down. Canon rates the shutters in their 1D Mark II cameras for 200,000 cycles. Other than having Canon count it for you, I don't think there is a way to get an accurate count on how many actuations your camera has gone through, however there are ways to estimate it. The most popular way is to use an EXIF reader (I use the very originally named program called EXIF Reader). It is just a small program that will read and display the camera settings used for each shot such as aperture, shutter speed, flash settings, etc. It also reads the number of actuations, however it is limited in that for some reason, it seems to reset itself around every 65,000-68,000 clicks.
All that said, I plugged my very last image taken and the actuations read 13,402. My best estimation of my shutter actuations on this camera is roughly between 200,000-210,000 actuations (I bought it with about 50,000 actuations, and I have turned the counter over three times), which is just about what Canon rates the 1D Mark II's shutter.
Anyways, this is first frame in which I knew something was up. It was a base hit by the Pirates leadoff hitter. Right when it happened, I heard a strange sounding cracking noise, which I originally thought was maybe his bat cracking.
I knew from past readings about blown shutters that finding white streaks in your images is a big clue that the shutter has gone out. So I took another photo to make sure.
Yup, now there's a black streak along with the white streak, which is the shutter showing up in the frame. Well, off to the repair facility it goes!
As with any other piece of technology, you use it enough, it will wear down and break down. Canon rates the shutters in their 1D Mark II cameras for 200,000 cycles. Other than having Canon count it for you, I don't think there is a way to get an accurate count on how many actuations your camera has gone through, however there are ways to estimate it. The most popular way is to use an EXIF reader (I use the very originally named program called EXIF Reader). It is just a small program that will read and display the camera settings used for each shot such as aperture, shutter speed, flash settings, etc. It also reads the number of actuations, however it is limited in that for some reason, it seems to reset itself around every 65,000-68,000 clicks.
All that said, I plugged my very last image taken and the actuations read 13,402. My best estimation of my shutter actuations on this camera is roughly between 200,000-210,000 actuations (I bought it with about 50,000 actuations, and I have turned the counter over three times), which is just about what Canon rates the 1D Mark II's shutter.
Anyways, this is first frame in which I knew something was up. It was a base hit by the Pirates leadoff hitter. Right when it happened, I heard a strange sounding cracking noise, which I originally thought was maybe his bat cracking.
I knew from past readings about blown shutters that finding white streaks in your images is a big clue that the shutter has gone out. So I took another photo to make sure.
Yup, now there's a black streak along with the white streak, which is the shutter showing up in the frame. Well, off to the repair facility it goes!
posted by Jerry at 8:51 AM
1 Comments:
No way! Bummer!
Well, that's what you have a backup camera for though right? Better check how many shutter clicks you have on that one though! :)
Post a Comment
<< Home