M8 shutter actuations

[ho_co]

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I looked for the information in PhotoME. The display said 886 only. No 'H' or preceeding 0s.

 

Paul--Are you sure PhotoME converts hex to decimal?

 

See the next post (by Philipp) for a quick way to verify.

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Take four more shots. Look at the counter again. If it reads "88A", the number is hexadecimal and needs to be converted into decimal. If the counter reads "890", it's decimal and does not require any further conversion.

[paulmichaelsnr]

Pop, I checked and I have photos L9990398 to L9990411 and M8Inf.exe numbers them as 876 - 889.

 

Now all I need is an answer to my entry #11 in this thread.

[pop]

Paul - The number is definitely written in decimal notation, not in hexadecimal as some supposed and most certainly not in "binary" as you wrote in an earlier post.

 

This follows from:

- The files are numbered with a letter, followed by a decimal number.

- The difference between the largest and the smallest of a set of consecutive file numbers is 13.

- The difference between the largest and the smallest of a set of consecutive numbers given for the actuation counter is also 13, when you read those numbers as decimal.

- The difference between those two numbers would have been 19 if the counter was written in hexadecimal notation.

[lct]

"Image Unique ID" numbers from exif data are hexadecimal, so if you found 876 there, it means 2166 shutter actuations which is a low number.

"ShutterCount" numbers from M8-Info are decimal, so if you found 876 there, it means 876 shutter actuations which is an even lower number.

OK folks?

[ho_co]

I've just had a thought. My M8 is an M8u. Would Solms have zeroed the count when they changed the shutter for the M9 model?

 

No. When I got my shutter upgraded, the counter was not reset.

 

There was one case on the forum where the Image Unique ID number repeatedly reset itself to 0. IIRC, the continual resetting was solved by re-installing the firmware, but the total number of shots made will always now be incorrect for this camera.

[cbretteville]

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I looked for the information in PhotoME. The display said 886 only. No 'H' or preceeding 0s.

 

The Image unique ID information is stored in two different locations in the M8 files.

 

First: It is stored in the standard documented "Camera Data" block of the exif information, the specification for this field calls for the ascii character representation of an up to 128 bit hexadecimal number. The field size is 33 characters and in practice it looks something like this:

00000000000000000000000000004c55

Second: In 2007, when deciphering the "Maker notes" block (this block can contain anything the manufacturers want then to) I found one of the members to be a numerical representation of the same information stored in the ImageUniqueID in character form in the Camera Data block. As it is stored as a number it is up to the presenter of the information to decide how s/he wants to display the info. Jens Duttke, when writing PhotoME decided to show the number in decimal:

19541

He could have chosen hexadecimal (or indeed octal or binary). As most live in a world where numbers in general are decimal, the omission of a number system indicator is natural unless you present something other than decimal. Had he used hex, he could have displayed the number as

4c55h

or

0x4c55

 

Carl