Shutter life expectancy

nic22 wrote:

Hi everybody,

In the process of looking for a backup body, I've come across a fair-priced (170usd) GX7 with a 32k shutter count. ...

In my case:
EM10, 24k clicks

Short answer, 32K isn't that big IMO. I think the life expectancy is in the 100k ballpark (somewhere from 75k to 150k), but that's a guess. So it's about 1/3 it's expected life. Don't worry unless you're going to shoot time lapse with the m-shutter.

(At that time, 100k was an enthusiast's shutter count claim, 75k was more basic or older camera's shutter count, and I think the E-M1 (mark 1) and other pro level cameras were 150k. Nowadays, 200k is more the pro/enthusiastic level.)

Long answer:

Shutter life expectancy is an arbitrary number that manufactures come up with that means X% of the shutters will last that long. The percentage could be 95%, or 99% or 50%. Even if it's 99%, it still means 1% will fail before that point; aka not guaranteed to last that long. But it also doesn't mean that it won't go a lot over that number, either.

A couple points of reference: My GX7 has about 49k shutter count. My D5100 has about 150k shutter count. Both are still going fine. Nikon stated the D5100 has a life expectancy of 100k, so I'm one of the ~95% (or whatever % nikon used) that has already "out lived" its expected life. I shoot time lapses, so that's how I got so high shutter count on these cameras.

OTOH, my G9 lists only 2.3k (mechanical) shutter count, but I use the e-shutter a lot more on the G9 than I did with the GX7, and the D5100 is mechanical only. I took over 2000 images in one day last month, mostly e-shutter, so they aren't showing in the shutter count number.