Unexpectedly high shutter count on Z6iii - explained
I just wanted to share something I figured out recently in case it helps anyone else. It’s one of those things that probably should have been obvious, but it didn’t occur to me at first.
I randomly checked the shutter count on my Z6iii and it showed around 10,000. That completely threw me off because the camera is only a few months old, I bought it brand new, and I definitely haven’t taken that many photos. I even remember checking the shutter count when I first got it and it was at 0.
I started digging through my files to see what was going on. In the metadata, one photo would show something like 2,000, and the very next shot in sequence would jump to 4,000. At that point I was convinced something was wrong with the firmware.
Then it finally clicked: When you make an in-camera timelapse, the camera doesn’t save all the individual frames. It uses them internally to create the final video, then clears them from the buffer. Those shutter actuations still count toward the total though.
~~What makes this a bit disappointing is that Nikon doesn’t separate mechanical and electronic shutter counts. All of my timelapses were done with the electronic shutter, but they still inflate the overall shutter count as if they were mechanical actuations. It makes it harder to know the real wear on the mechanical shutter.~~
Edit: As someone in the comments pointed out - EXIF data actually does show mechanical shutter count separately. While online shutter count websites might not show that, there's a command line exiftool which does.
https://redd.it/1p6ny7x
@NikonBackup
I just wanted to share something I figured out recently in case it helps anyone else. It’s one of those things that probably should have been obvious, but it didn’t occur to me at first.
I randomly checked the shutter count on my Z6iii and it showed around 10,000. That completely threw me off because the camera is only a few months old, I bought it brand new, and I definitely haven’t taken that many photos. I even remember checking the shutter count when I first got it and it was at 0.
I started digging through my files to see what was going on. In the metadata, one photo would show something like 2,000, and the very next shot in sequence would jump to 4,000. At that point I was convinced something was wrong with the firmware.
Then it finally clicked: When you make an in-camera timelapse, the camera doesn’t save all the individual frames. It uses them internally to create the final video, then clears them from the buffer. Those shutter actuations still count toward the total though.
~~What makes this a bit disappointing is that Nikon doesn’t separate mechanical and electronic shutter counts. All of my timelapses were done with the electronic shutter, but they still inflate the overall shutter count as if they were mechanical actuations. It makes it harder to know the real wear on the mechanical shutter.~~
Edit: As someone in the comments pointed out - EXIF data actually does show mechanical shutter count separately. While online shutter count websites might not show that, there's a command line exiftool which does.
https://redd.it/1p6ny7x
@NikonBackup
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