[Jason Dunn]

http://www.opanda.com/en/iexif/index.html

"Opanda IExif is a professional Exif viewer in Windows / IE / Firefox, From a photographer's eye, It displays the image taken from digital camera and every item of EXIF data in the image from beginning to end. The user can learn about how and where to take the photo, what the camera's model is, the detail of photographer and more in IExif. You can know more information and some unbeknown story. It is not only the good assistant to study photography, but also the best choice to view EXIF for photographer, shutterbug, photo editor and so on..."



I had no idea there was this much data embedded in an image! I came to learn of this program after I was discussing selling my D200 (to be replaced with a D300, naturally). When you're selling a DSLR, a common question is how many actuations (shutter snaps) the camera has taken, weighed against how many it's rated for. It's kind of like mileage on a car. In my case, my D200 has taken 21,025 images since I bought it some 20 months ago. If I kept up the same rate of shooting, I could shoot another 6.5 years with it before hitting the rated spec of 100,000 actuations. Not bad at all - Nikon builds these things to last quite a while. What I'm not sure about is what happens when you hit the rated actuation limit - it certainly wouldn't stop working, but perhaps the odds of a malfunction or breakdown go up. Anyone know?

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.opanda.com/en/iexif/index.html

"Opanda IExif is a professional Exif viewer in Windows / IE / Firefox, From a photographer's eye, It displays the image taken from digital camera and every item of EXIF data in the image from beginning to end. The user can learn about how and where to take the photo, what the camera's model is, the detail of photographer and more in IExif. You can know more information and some unbeknown story. It is not only the good assistant to study photography, but also the best choice to view EXIF for photographer, shutterbug, photo editor and so on..."



I had no idea there was this much data embedded in an image! I came to learn of this program after I was discussing selling my D200 (to be replaced with a D300, naturally). When you're selling a DSLR, a common question is how many actuations (shutter snaps) the camera has taken, weighed against how many it's rated for. It's kind of like mileage on a car. In my case, my D200 has taken 21,025 images since I bought it some 20 months ago. If I kept up the same rate of shooting, I could shoot another 6.5 years with it before hitting the rated spec of 100,000 actuations. Not bad at all - Nikon builds these things to last quite a while. What I'm not sure about is what happens when you hit the rated actuation limit - it certainly wouldn't stop working, but perhaps the odds of a malfunction or breakdown go up. Anyone know?

[Neil Enns]

Interesting, I'll have to give this a try. I used to use exifer but always found it messy and difficult to work with (especially on Vista).

[marlof]

Your camera should be able to fire off 100.000 actuations before you should be expecting errors with the shutter assembly. It's not a guarantee though, just an estimation. Some cameras are known to live happily after their quoted number of actuations, others need to have their shutter assembly replaced before they get to that number. But yes, you could say that the closer you are to the 100.000 (or over) the odds of things going wrong incease.

[yslee]

The 100k estimated acuations probably doesn't work too far from the way MTBF works, I presume. It's just a gauge of reliability rather than life expectancy.

[backpackerx]

Jason, great find. Thanks.

I downloaded the program but the shutter actuations aren't listed on any of the views I can see. I've tried it on pics taken with my point and shoot Canon A70, my dSLR Rebel XT, and my Uncle's Canon 20D but don't see the actuations field in the summary data as listed in your screen shot. Was that the free version you were using?

Thanks,

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Marlof Bregonje

But yes, you could say that the closer you are to the 100.000 (or over) the odds of things going wrong incease.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought - thanks for confirming that.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by backpackerx

...and my Uncle's Canon 20D but don't see the actuations field in the summary data as listed in your screen shot. Was that the free version you were using?

Yes, that was the free version I was using. The exact name and location of the EXIF field is probably unique to Nikon though - Canon probably calls it something different and puts it in a slightly different place. Or, possibly, they don't list it at all.