How many shots on your D50?

[sergiu]

For D50 users, how many shutter realeases does your camera have? I'm somewhere

around 60 k , and to be honest I'm a little intimidated by it.Any thoughts?

[Peter_in_PA]

Only about 10,000 I don't have a real happy trigger finger actually. Editing the files is

too exhausting.

[dennis_oconnor4]

Well, lets see...

60,000 divided by 36 is 1666 rolls of film...

Lets guess at $9 a roll to buy the film and have it developed and printed onto 4X6 prints is roughly $14,994.00

 

So, how much does this camera owe you when the shutter fails?

 

denny - happy D50 shooter

[dave_raines]

I just crossed 40k on my D50 a couple weeks ago, and was just wondering the same thing. I did a little research on it, and saw a lot of numbers thrown around as to how many are expected (anywhere between 30-100k). What I was really looking for was an actual story from someone who actually had their d50 fail after a large number of photos. Never did though.

The mirror on mine has started sticking occasionally (it's happened 3 times), but I always manage to get it back just by turning it on and off and taking a few pictures. Worries me every time.

 

But in the end, I don't know why I even bother worrying or looking into it. Given how cheap I am, and how crazy I am, I'm much more likely to drop it into a crevasse than I am to buying a new camera because I'm worried my D50 will fail. I love my D50 like a son, and I'm sticking with him until the wheels fall off (or whatever the camera equivalent of wheels falling off is).

[User_276104]

I don't know if I can ask this without sounding like a wise guy, but for those that have tens of thousands of actuations on your cameras -

 

What have you taken 50,000+ pictures of?

 

I've shot 225 rolls of slide film in the last 11 years - that amounts to 8,100 actuations if they were all shot with the same camera. Sometimes I've seen posts on the Internet from people that get a new DSLR and claim to have shot 4,000 pictures in the first week.

 

I've had my D2x for nearly 2 1/2 years and it has less than 5,000 *miles* on it. That's due in part to the fact that I still use slide film a lot, but I can't imagine taking thousands of photos in a single weekend.

[dave_raines]

Eric, of course you're right, in some sense. Of my D50's 40,000 shots, a heck of a lot of them should never have been taken. But of all those shots that shouldn't have been taken, I'm awfully glad I have a lot of them. To me, it's really nice not only to have the good shots (the kind I took when I used film), but having thousands of pictures that are simply memory joggers is really cool and wonderful to me. I guarantee you I have at least 7-8k of pictures out of moving cars. Some of them are genuinely good shots, some are just funny goofy shots of people walking down the street, some don't get deleted simply because I can go through that road trip and know exactly where I was at every given moment, and can actually experience it again in a way that I can't going through the 'good pictures' of trips from the film days.

 

Of course, that rant is just my personal quirks of using my camera. The real advantage, and the one that led to probably 25k of my 40k pictures, is taking candid pictures of people doing things. I work as a photographer at a youth camp in the summer. I've taken 1,000 pictures in 2 hours, just looking for that one picture of the exact right group of kids doing the exact right thing with the exact right look on their face. Stuff that's not worth it if you're paying 30 cents a shot.

[User_276104]

I guess since I still use film a lot, I haven't been able to shake the "make every frame count" mentality that goes with paying for each exposure.

[pete_s.]

I asked a Nikon repair tech once and he said just shoot until it fails and then you'll send it in for a shutter replacement. You'll never know when it's going to happen anyway so no need to worry. If you truly must have a fully operational camera, you truly must have at least one backup body anyway.

 

Peter

[tim_knight]

Dave, My shutter started to stick and on this site found out it was my new battery. I cleaned the contacts on both batteris and have not had the shutter hang up on me since. I hopw this works for you. I am presently at around 20,000 clicks on my D50.

[bartimeus1]

My older D50 started having "ERR"-symptons at around 42.000 clicks. Those symptoms were sticky mirror, staying locked to upper position after a photo and also weird sounds and slow response from the camera. I got that camera into warranty paid service and they had replaced both shutter and winding mechanisms. Now it works again like new.

[sergiu]

Eric,

To answer your question about shooting a lot, I shot for two local newspapers , and a few evnets like weedings and such.I didn't really have any choice.

On a normal shooting session, for myself let's say, I rarely shoot more than 200 shots.

[bernie moore]

Usually when I come back from one of my recreational shoots (amateur here) I have a bunch of pictures that almost tickle me, but it seems that many have a tiny flaw such as a shadow or a blink or a slight breeze blur, any of a multitude of flaws the can affect a photo. Invariably I end up wishing that I took more shots, tried a different angle, setting etc. For me a great photo is a matter of persistence and a bit of luck: the more persistence the more luck. My goal for self improvement is to take more shots with different settings etc. Thus more shutter actuations for a better chance at a serendipitous discovery:) If you put this in the context of flying to the Caribbean to take some underwater shots you see that you don't want to leave any potential good shots down there. You can always take out the trash when you get home. I suppose this is more directed to Eric than the original post, sorry.