pico Posted March 16, 2014 Share #21 Posted March 16, 2014 Advertisement (gone after registration) Irrelevant? Why does the lowly Panasonic G1 record activations, and more! Sent from my Etcha-sketch. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted March 16, 2014 Posted March 16, 2014 Hi pico, Take a look here M 240 Actuation Count. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
mirekti Posted March 16, 2014 Share #22 Posted March 16, 2014 Maybe Leica is so certain the shutter would over live the camera so the shutter count is of no importance. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
viramati Posted March 16, 2014 Share #23 Posted March 16, 2014 Irrelevant? Why does the lowly Panasonic G1 record activations, and more! Sent from my Etcha-sketch. I have no idea but as the M has both a standard shutter actuation and LV actuation I would say it is almost impossible to get a clear picture of what is actually going on with shutter movements in any realistic way. I suppose you would have to have a system that kept a record of the total amount of images taken not the amount of times the shutter has open and closed (i.e. due to activation and deactivation of LV) Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted March 16, 2014 Share #24 Posted March 16, 2014 I have no idea but as the M has both a standard shutter actuation and LV actuation I would say it is almost impossible to get a clear picture of what is actually going on with shutter movements in any realistic way. I suppose you would have to have a system that kept a record of the total amount of images taken not the amount of times the shutter has open and closed (i.e. due to activation and deactivation of LV) With no disrespect to you, I point to Leica for being lazy. There are so very many ways to track imaging activations that I call negligence. Sent from my Etcha-sketch. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
erl Posted March 16, 2014 Share #25 Posted March 16, 2014 Maybe I am being the dumb Devil's Advocate here, but why is it so important to count shutter actuations? Must it be counted just because it can be? If I were buying a second hand camera, that would be the least important bit of useful(?) info I would seek. Never had a shutter fail in over 50+ years. Correction, I had a Hasselblad Compur shutter fail with a broken spring. It was quickly and cheaply replaced, the same day. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted March 17, 2014 Share #26 Posted March 17, 2014 As others have said, once live-view and video functions were added to cameras, "shutter actuations" became a misleading measure of "use." A video take of 20 minutes only counts as one shutter actuation, so a previous user could have shot 200 hours of video and only recorded 600 shutter actuations. In the other direction, if someone has used live-view a lot for viewing, but not taken many final pictures, the actuation count may run high - 10,000 actuations but only 2,000 pictures taken. Canon also began encrypting their SA counts with the 7D and 5DMk2. For the same reason - a number that lies is worse than no number at all. 3 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted March 17, 2014 Share #27 Posted March 17, 2014 Advertisement (gone after registration) I suppose it is important because people traditionally think of the shutter as the thing most likely to fail first, and it gives a rough idea of how much the camera has been used. But just as car mileage doesn't record the number of times the engine has been red lined so the shutter doesn't indicate the way the camera has been used. It may well be the case that heat cycles of the sensor play a more important part in indicating camera life than the shutter. So long exposures or using video a lot, which only count for one shutter actuation, may have a more dangerous cumulative effect. Perhaps in years to come the second hand buyer will want to see the owners portfolio of work rather than the shutter count? Steve Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
viramati Posted March 17, 2014 Share #28 Posted March 17, 2014 With no disrespect to you, I point to Leica for being lazy. There are so very many ways to track imaging activations that I call negligence. Sent from my Etcha-sketch. No offence taken and maybe they could, I just am not really sure of the relevance when it comes to show camera usage with a modern LV type shutter Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted March 17, 2014 Share #29 Posted March 17, 2014 The Panasonic G1 has a hidden menu that shows the number of power-ups and shutter activations which as you all have shown is not particularly helpful. Maybe it would be better to record the total times and meantime of a hot sensor. It is interesting, however, that the menu also reveals a diagnostic log of the last 16 error events. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bla Posted March 17, 2014 Share #30 Posted March 17, 2014 Hello M owners, I'd like to have a look at the shutter count on a M-240 cause it annoys me that they obfuscated it. Problem is I don't have one at hand. So I'd need one or several M users willing to spend a few minutes to provide me with some data. If you meet the following requirements I'd be glad for a notice (PM, mail, whatever) 1.) you own a Leica M(240) 2.) you're annoyed by not being able to read the shutter count any more 3.) you're never(seldom) shooting videos 4.) you never(seldom) reset image numbering 5.) you're the first owner of your M so we can assume it hasn't had many exposures before you got it That's how I plan to do it: I'll write a small tool that you put in the folder where your images are stored and it'll create a list with the necessary information. You then send me the list and I'll try to find out how it's done. I can't promise that it works, but I want to give it a try. If I figure it out there'll be a small program like M9info or something of that sort... I hope I find some help! Cheers, Arvid Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bla Posted March 18, 2014 Share #31 Posted March 18, 2014 Update: I finished the small information gathering tool. I have versions for Mac and for Windows. It just reads the file number, unique id and acquisition time of your M240 images and saves them to a text file. That file is valuable resource for me when trying to understand the unique ID... Feel free to contact me if you like to participate! Cheers, Arvid Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bla Posted March 18, 2014 Share #32 Posted March 18, 2014 (edited) And once again an update: I set up a simple page on my website, where you find more information and the download links for the tool (Mac OS X and Windows). M240digger I invite you once again to participate! Edited March 18, 2014 by bla 3 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott kirkpatrick Posted March 18, 2014 Share #33 Posted March 18, 2014 I've just put 900 images into a single file and run Arvid's tool on them. Sent the results to him, then took a look at them myself. He creates a file with the filename, unique ID, and timestamp for each image on a separate line. One interesting discovery is that the "unique IDs" are not unique. It makes you wonder what they are supposed to be for. Since they are not unique, this is not an encoded shutter activation count. Or it is a pretty lossy code. The unique IDs range up to about 2,600,000. I hope others will send him some similar results from different cameras. If someone has never used liveview or advanced exposure metering, that would help. scott Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff S Posted March 18, 2014 Share #34 Posted March 18, 2014 Posts #30, 31 and 32 filled my screen and read "bla, bla, bla…." No offense…just struck me funny. Jeff 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pop Posted March 18, 2014 Share #35 Posted March 18, 2014 I have downloaded and run the digger (mine was download #4 for the Mac version, it seems). After several seconds of progressing through a number of directories it displays Segmentation fault: 11 logout (Mac OS X 10.7.5, pictures on an external USB drive). Also, the URL for the contact page appears not to be working, at least not with my copy of the Safari browser. Instructions, please, preferably by PM or Mail (pop dot leica dot forum at gmail dot com) Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bla Posted March 18, 2014 Share #36 Posted March 18, 2014 Posts #30, 31 and 32 filled my screen and read "bla, bla, bla…." No offense…just struck me funny. Jeff Hey Jeff, at the time I was creating the account I really couldn't think of a name... so that's exactly what it means. And to be honest, for some people the more technical aspect of photography that I like to do might be a little bla, bla, from time to time. Those 3 posts in a row came because I couldn't edit my last post somehow. Weird behaviour... Otherwise I would have just added the updates. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
india42 Posted March 18, 2014 Share #37 Posted March 18, 2014 Hmm, I never thought about shutter actuations with my M3 (or any film camera I ever used). I bought a new Canon 20D and never thought about the shutter count until I went to sell it and every buyer wanted to know how high the shutter count was. I had to do some research and suddenly it seemed that everyone was worried about it (myself included). I wanted to get an M8 and I wanted to make sure it had a low shutter count. I guess that you can tell how much use the camera has seen, but that's about it, it says nothing how hard it was used. I found an M8 with 1100 clicks, put another 1000 on it, and the shutter failed. I was more than a little irritated, had it fixed and never really felt comfortable with it after that, so I sold it and bought the M. The more I think about this, the more I think it doesn't matter (shutter count). it's the luck of the draw, more than likely it will last quite a while, maybe 100k clicks. For the amount of pictures I take, it will be more than 10 years, something else will probably go wrong before then. Just my take Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pop Posted March 18, 2014 Share #38 Posted March 18, 2014 You can change your posts only during one hour, and at times even that is too long. In heated discussions things can become confusing if a member edits his post after other members have replied already. The cause for the crashed program appears to lie with an empty DNG file which was frightfully easy to find since it was the last filename written to the Terminal window. I simply deleted that file and re-ran the program, and everything just worked nicely. (I write this for the benefit of the public at large since you know all that). Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
photonenzelle Posted May 30, 2017 Share #39 Posted May 30, 2017 hey @bla: could you work out the app or was it just bla bla? Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pop Posted May 30, 2017 Share #40 Posted May 30, 2017 hey @bla: could you work out the app or was it just bla bla? You don't really expect an answer after three years, do you? 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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