Canon Digital Rebel Shutter Life

[pradeep1]

I was just reading a forum post on dpreview (a friend gave me the

link), which was about the life of a shutter on the digital rebel,

they say that there are problems with the shutter after around 10,000

shots or so, how far is this true? is this a known problem if it is

true? cheers!

[phule]

Pradeep,

 

The dpreview.com forums are both a blessing and a curse.

 

While there are many helpful people on the boards, there is also a LOT of disinformation and uninformed speculation. Often this is done by people with an axe to grind against one company or another.

 

I think you should take what you read there with a grain of salt.

[wedding-photography-denver]

Not had any complaints in that area yet. (12,000 and on so far).

[casey mcallister]

Your missing a zero. The estimate is 100K according to Canon. Odds are something else will go wrong before the shutter fails. There are so many of these camera's around that if the shutter's were failing at ~10K you would be hearing a lot of gripes...

[jay_.]

I have no proof of this, it's only a suspicion, but I suspect that in the interest of economy Canon does not make three different shutter mechanisms for their DSLR's, and what differentiates the DReb from the 10D shutter is the control unit not the mechanics. Heck, we now now that even the camera control chip is the same in both cameras, all Canon did was cripple it so the DReb has less features. But I could be wrong. Personally I do not suffer from lead-finger-syndrome as many digital shooters do, the first time I tried to wade through a full 512MB CF card (and I shoot JPEG's so that's a heap of shots)cured me of that. Plus of course I still shoot 75% of my photography and 100% of my serious personal photography on film.

[awindsor]

Chuck Westfall has stated several times that Canon will not release the life expectancy of the 10D or 300D shutters. I am not sure where this 100,000 figure come from. I have never seen any official word on this from Canon. They have said it is less than the 150,000 cycles claimed for the 1D Mk II shutter. The EOS 3 gets has a life expectancy of 100,000 cycles and the 1V is 150,000. The shutter units on the 10D and 300D are not the same as these pro models and I suspect they will not do as well. I don't know of a source for the life expectancy of the shutter units in the low end film models either.

 

In short 10,000 is too little. There would be a rash of shutter failures and there is not. There may be some unfortunate souls who have shutter failures at 10,000 since these are popular cameras and their are always outliers but I would expect closer to 50,000. Even the old EOS 5 got 50,000 and it had a double shading shutter.

 

Finally a shutter unit can be replaced. I am sure the 300D has a cheap shutter unit and so it should be cheap to replace.

[pradeep1]

i should have guessed when it was from dpreview that it would not be genuine information. seriously, i think Brian and team should be given an award for designing a forum so simple and user friendly, gosh dpreviews forum is plain pathetic, wonder why they have a forum design like that. 'PN is the best :)' thanks guys for your time and inputs. cheers!

[ron c sunshine coast,qld,a]

I have reliable information that one failed at 10000 but it is definitely the exception.Others are saying 20000,30000 even 50000 and still going strong.One guy said he bought a D30 with 60000 on the clock and it was working fine but the flash sync was out (i.e the shutter was consistantly slower but still giving good exposures)

<P>Oh-and DP review is pretty much the worst camera forum on the net-from all the comments i hear

[erb_duchenne]

I think where shutter life is concerned, it depends a lot on luck and abuse. I guess with digital a lot fewer people stick their finger through the hole. (What hole?)

 

In any case I'm close to 25k now. No probs. Replacement, I've asked, is around $100. I'm not THAT worried.

[hiromu_kurosaki]

I think the shutter life largely depends on what kind of shutter speed you use the most. For those who mainly shoot landscape, they probably use slower shutter speed, and their shutter may live longer. On the other hand, sports shooter may use faster shutter speed a lot, and theirs may not last as long as others. But the best thing is not to worry about the life, shoot as much as you want. And once it fails, just have it fixed.

 

Thanks

Hiromu

[catchiest_zero]

Why would "shutter-speed" affect the life expectancy of the shutter? Physically, the shutter always moves at the exact same speed, regardless of the "shutter-speed" that's dialed-in.

[theoldmoose]

Jay,

 

To be pedantic, the 300D does not have the same chip as the 10D. Where the 10D had three chips to perform the majority of camera functions, the 300D shrunk the same circuitry onto one chip, saving a lot of circuit board space ($$$) and interconnects ($$$).

 

The upshot is that the 300D chip is largely software compatible to the 10D chipset, but there are certainly differences in the pinout of the chip, and most likely some changed and/or missing I/O port connections.

 

This would explain (among other things) the lack of any obvious way to restore some of the disabled functionality that is in the 300D firmware, mainly because certain buttons that were on the 10D don't exist on the 300D, and in all probability, the I/O pins that were used to connect to them don't exist on the 300D chip (this may not be entirely true, because a lot of embedded chips use a row/column I/O pin matrix to 'strobe' keypads and other external switches/buttons -- it may just be a matter of adding buttons at the right position in the scanning matrix, if one wants to really hack away on their 300D).

 

The 300D firmware hackers have done a pretty good job, considering, to find ways to re-map some of the more desirable functions onto otherwise-unused (or likely less-used, like 'jump') 300D buttons.

 

Considering that Olympus has been releasing firmware upgrades (not just bug fixes) to enhance the operating capabilities of their E-1, I wonder if Canon might ultimately respond with releasing an official enchanced firmware for the 300D, especially if they replace the 10D this fall with an upgrade, and also introduce a new entry level ($500) camera. Enhancing the 300D firmware would help place it between the cheaper 300D replacement, and the 10D MKII (or whatever it will be called).

 

One can always hope... 8-)