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Actuation's count?


marcg

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Is there any way to determine the number of actuation's on a Leica M – specifically a Leica M10?

 

Secondly, is it right that even though you do and in camera format of an SD card, that it retains its number sequence?

 

I don't quite understand why the SD card which I took out of a Monochrom to use in a new M10 is naming files from about L1008400 onwards

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I had the same issue with a card which I had already used in my M240. With the M10 there is a menu item called 'Image Numbering' where you can reset image numbering  and change filename etc.

 

William

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The number of actuations can be drastically different than what the image number is. Shutter actuations can, at the present time, be had by Leics service techs only. There is a method thru M9 but not on anything later. Every time you activate live view there are two shutter actuations that don't record in image count as that is recorded every time the sensor records an image taken.

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I wonder why Leica hides this kind of information that is available on almost any other camera.

 

You would think that particularly in a top-level professional camera, Leica might consider it appropriate to make all information available.

 

I wonder what they think they've got to hide

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Not sure about that but they do.

Really doesn't mean a whole lot though. Leica bodies are repairable for the mechanics for a whole lot longer than other manufacturers. Benefits of mainly mechanical works I guess. More repair people too.

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Except that people who are looking at buying second-hand Leicas are unable to make the sort of reasonable and prudent enquiries about the condition of the camera which most people take for granted when buying other brands

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In M10, when LV or EVF is used, shutter actuations are 2 or 3 or more (when leave LV without actually trip the shutter), for each picture taken.

So number of shutter actuations means nothing or 2 or 3 times the number of pictures.

 

I wonder if other makers show which number when their cameras have LV : number of pictures taken or number of shutter count (2 or 3 times more).

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  • 1 year later...

I bought a new M10 from a local Leica dealer in San Diego yesterday and just noticed today that the first I took yesterday had an image file number of L1009282. That surprised me, I would have expected something lower (assuming the factory takes a few test pictures) for a new camera. I checked the image numbering menu and it is set to L100-0001.DNG, so I think it started recording images at -0001.

 

My SD card was from Nikon with DSC numbering, and was formatted in the M10. The QA card in the box has a Jan 5, 2018 time stamp of manufacturing, so it's been around for awhile. The box and packing all looked new when I took it out.

 

I am going back to the dealer on Monday to discuss, but wondering if anyone else has seen new cameras out of the box with a high image file number. I guess I shouldn't worry about it as the camera is working fine, but something doesn't seem right.

 

 

Edit / Update - I Just found other posts with new owners having a similar situations of high image numbers when new, and possible that the factory tests are using SD cards while testing that have high numbers, so the body picks up the number during tests. Makes sense.

Edited by Buickwilson
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hey why do you want to know??? , if you take 100 pictures every  day for the next 20 years then you may in the end  encounter some wear of your shutter. 

 

when you buy a m10 second hand the shutter actiation will probably not exceed the 25000 and thats like new

 

When you buy second hand I think after all it can be a quite an important information:

 

Note: 100 pictures a day during 20 years equals 365x100x20 . . . . This means that the shutter would have some hundred thousand actuations . . . (exactly 730.000 actuations)

 

To want to know that figure comes maybe from Canon or Nikons where in the specs the producer states clearly for how many actuations the shutter is built. A Canon 5D IV is built for 200.000 actuations . . . . This is then at the same time considered the lifespan of the whole camera. That is why in the Canon/Nikon market that number is so important and there are many programs with which you can read that number out of the camera.

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As a new M10 and formerly M9 owner I was wondering about that issue, too. The image ID of he M9 was similar to the image/shutter counter. When I gave away the M9 it was also for me very interesting, how many shots I did during the years I owned the M9. That the shutter count of the M10 differs from the image count because of live view makes sense to me. What I find interessting is, that the image ID of M10 files contains the serial number of the camera in the high bytes area and a somehow arbitrary number in the lower bytes area. I wonder if this is just an GUID. But anyway that makes it possible to identify the camera which takes the picture. Was this the case in the M type 240 camera "family", too?

Edited by ekpleo
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This is a normal thing to know for used cameras, and active photographers definitely can hit the limits. I was at 280k for the last camera I sold, and it had been a back up camera for 5 of the 9 years I'd owned it. The buyer knew full well he was on borrowed time with it, and were I buying a used camera I would most certainly want to know as well. SLR's probably get heavier shutter use than the M's, but still. For a busy wedding/assingment photographer with an M, you could potentially hit 100k clicks in 2-4 years. It's not uncommon for dSLR's to get shutter replacements.  

 

There doesn't seem to be any logical reason to hide this information, other than the shutter life is perhaps not great and with easily available information to verify this people might talk about it. Speculation but really, why hide it? Transparency stops this kind of speculation. 

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Since Leica released M-with-LV, there is no easy way to know this "count".

 

To repeat myself post #11 : with LV this number "actuations count" is meaningless.

Which count ? every time that the shutter close/open or only every frames "really took" ?

 

:)

Or better yet, separate the two counts must be fair.

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Since Leica released M-with-LV, there is no easy way to know this "count".

 

Some of us use the M10 with OVF only, without an EVF and without ever activating LV.  It would be nice to have a counter of how many images the camera captured, like the M9 shows.

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I don't quite understand why the SD card which I took out of a Monochrom to use in a new M10 is naming files from about L1008400 onwards

 

This is a "safety feature" to prevent one ever ending up with pictures with identical names/numbers. The camera always checks the highest-numbered picture file it finds on an inserted previously used card, and advances its count to add 1 to that.

 

When you get a new camera - either: Buy all news cards for that camera, or format a card you want to "recycle" - in the original camera - so that there are no numbered picture files left in the LEICA folder, before letting it anywhere near your new camera, where you format it again to start fresh.

 

It has been suggested that one or more Leica techs doing the final camera checks at the factory fail to follow this "SD card hygiene" technique, or forget to reset the numbering to "L1000000" afterwards, leading to picture names/numbers in the hundreds or thousands even from "new, boxed" cameras.

 

With regard to "unique picture IDs," once Live-view and/or EVFs came into use, the tracking between "pictures made" and shutter actuations became garbled. Every time you use live-view, the shutter actuates - whether you actually take a picture, or decide not to. An indecisive photographer may end up with 100 actuations, but only 10 pictures.

 

Video (not an M10 feature) also complicates the relationship between shutter count and "wear and tear" on the camera. The shutter actuates once even for a 30-minute video clip, so a camera with video may have been used for hours and hours of video-making and show less than 50 "actuations." Which is why many manufacturers have now hidden or encrypted their actuation counts - they simply don't track "usage" as precisely as they used to.

 

Of course, sensor cleaning also adds "non-picture shutter actuations" but only 1 per week/month/3 months.

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