Ever wanted to know the shuttercount of your Canon DSLR? I did for my 7D. So I set off on the internet to find a way to do this. This blog post describes the how and what of my “quest”.
Where you cannot get it from
Shutter counts on Canon DSLRs is a little hard to get to. The shutter count is definitely NOT included in the EXIF data that is included in the shots made. It is also unavailable from the 7D’s menu. OF course Canon has a utility that displays the shutter count right? Wrong. No Canon tool I could find retrieves the shutter count. I’m sure they have these tools at service centers, but not publicly available.
In order to get to the shutter count, you need to connect your DSLR via USB to your computer, but then what?
Online programs
One I remembered from a previous quest was www.eoscount.com . This website installs an active-X plugin into your browser that in turn will read the info from the first detected camera connected to your machine. Active-X means Internet Explorer, no other browser can do this. I had a little problem getting this running, but after manually downloading and installing the Active-X component I got everything running on my 64-bit Windows 7.
Where this program used to display the shutter count, it now said “AVAILABLE”. Now what’s that supposed to mean? It means you need to pay (and even that did not work properly on the website):
So the search went on – I do not want to pay every single time I want to view my shutter counts. Next, I stumbled upon this website which is just for Mac users:
http://www.twam.info/software/read-out-canon-eos-7d-shuttercount-on-os-x
I did not even bother testing this one, as it is so user unfriendly. I was looking for a simple tool that would do the trick. Finally I found exactly this, at www.eosmsg.com:
Even better, at eosmsg.com they also have a standalone version of the software, so you do not specifically need Internet Explorer. The standalone version looks like this:
Crude but effective – A simple tool which simply does the trick!
Why isn’t my Canon DSLR supported by these tools?
Unfortunately not all Canon DSLRs are supported. My old EOS 400D will not work using these tools. Why not? I’m guessing because the 400D has a DIGIC II chip. All cameras with a DIGIC III chip or newer appear to be supported.
So how to read the shutter counts of the older DSLRs? Actually I do not know, I’m not even sure these cameras track the number of shutter actuations…
Canon DSLR shutter life expectancy
Canon specifies a number of shutter actuations a DSLR should be expected to be able to perform throughout their lives. This is different for every model. In general, the more high-end the camera is, the more shutter actuation’s it can handle:
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT / 350D | 50,000 |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi / 400D | 50,000 |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi / 450D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i / 500D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T2i / 550D | 100,000? |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T3i / 600D | 100,000? |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T4i / 650D | 100,000? |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T5i / 700D | 100,000? |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS / 1000D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS Digital Rebel T3 / 1100D | 100,000? |
Canon EOS 20D | 50,000 |
Canon EOS 30D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS 40D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS 50D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS 60D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS 5D | 100,000 |
Canon EOS 5D Mark II | 150,000 |
Canon EOS 5D Mark III | 150,000 |
Canon EOS 7D | 150,000 |
Canon EOS 1D Mark II N | 200,000 |
Canon EOS 1D Mark III | 300,000 |
Canon EOS 1D Mark IV | 300,000 |
Canon EOS 1DS Mark II | 200,000 |
Canon EOS 1DS Mark III | 300,000 |
Canon EOS 1DX | 400,000 |
Remember, these values are average life expectancy of the shutters in various models. Values in this table are used by Canon, the values with a question mark (?) behind them are “guesstimates”; given the line of cameras these values make sense, but they are unconfirmed.
The EOSMSG is great, totally free ; )
Thank you!!!
Doesn’t work. I try to download and all I get as an RAR file. I have no idea what to do with and rar file
A RAR file is like a ZIP file, so it is a compressed archive. You can use a 30 day trial of WinRAR (www.rarlabs.com) to unpack this file.
This program does not work. It says my camera had 18281 shutter actuation’s on it. This is not possibable. So I took a few shots and tried it again and nothing changed. it still said 18281.
What body did you try it on? Chances are, none of the tools will be able to the shuttercount, as they all use the same way of obraining it. Or it may be a bug…
thank you very much Erik, very usefull and it works perfectly with several camera’s 40d, 50d,7d
Groeten Tom
It is actually a nice and useful piece of information. I am satisfied that you
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Thanks for sharing.