Just bought a Nikon D80 with 97,000 shutter actuations!

[ShunCheung]

<p>I too feel that actuation count is a bit suspect, especially if the body appears to be in good condition. The OP might want to double check it.</p>

[areliano_decotentin]

<p>Calculate in the time you need to spend prowling ebay for a "better deal" and then waiting for that auction to end and a couple more rounds of shipping and you soon close the spread between the value of this camera and one with fewer actuations, especially considering the camera is no longer made and you won't find a virgin. I've got a Nissan with 190,000 miles and I'm not losing sleep over it.. That's a wall street guy's take, not a pro photographer...</p>

[van_do]

<p>thank you all for your input!! i think im going to go with the squaretrade extended warranty. itll make me feel safer when using the camera and if anything happens i will be covered and i wont be without a dslr for too long. </p>

<p>and Dieter, i see your point on saving the 50$ towards the 150$ repair if i need it but the extended warranty will cover more than just the shutter. so if anything else goes wrong ill still be covered.</p>

<p>and Douglas, i dont think that my Opanda software had an error. Elliot himself said that he reached 96k on his D3 in 1.5 years.</p>

[rafael_s]

<p>Well that's nothing. I have a D200 with over 16 million shutter actuations. Trying to reach 17 million. You can read about it here: http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00VFqv</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Rafael, no, you don't have a D200 with over 16M shutter actuations. What you have is a D200 with a wrong actuation counter.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>ave the money and pay the $150 repair fee if/when the shutter fails.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sounds rational to me. You surely have not been conned if it goes all the way to 150k. Any shutter can fail any time. Keep it and shoot it.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[david carver]

<p>Van do, seriously, send it back to the seller and go through Paypal to get your money. I would not keep it. It should have been disclosed.</p>

[nicolaiecostel]

<p>i'm not sure where you got the 150k actuations, to my knowldge, the D80 is rated at 50k. the D200 at 100 and the D300 at 150k. The D700 150 as well, and the professional ones, D3, D2, around 300k.<br>

it will be a lottery, best of luck.</p>

[paul_reklaitis]

<p>The other owner probably used a feature called "Interval Timer Photography" He could easily set the camera to shoot 2 frames a second and within 12 hours have 86,400 shutter actuations. I have shot this way before and went well over the tested cycles count. I would bet that your camera will work years after you decide to put it on the shelf and forget to use it! Don't put any more money into it and just ENJOY it. If you use it, and if you print photos, other people will get to enjoy your passion for photography. When people look at your photos, they will not care how many cycles are on your camera.</p>

 

[thomas_hardy1]

<p>At first I thought how can anyone have taken that many snaps with a camera that is a couple of years old? Then I remembered my friend showing off the frame rate of his new D200. It was like he was making a motion picture or something.</p>

[thomas_hardy1]

<p>At first I thought how can anyone have taken that many snaps with a camera that is a couple of years old? Then I remembered my friend showing off the frame rate of his new D200. It was like he was making a motion picture or something.</p>

[bill_brock1]

<p>I also have a D80 with 24k shutter count and I love the camera. And for all we know about your camera the guy did tons of time lapse movies and thats why it has so many clicks on it and in great shape. Just enjoy it!!!!!!</p>

[van_do]

<p>hey guys!! thanks for all of your input! it has really helped me a lot!<br>

and nicolaie costel, i got the 150k actuations from Nikon. I called them and thats the number they gave me, but it could be wrong.</p>

<p>and ive decided to keep the camera and to buy a warranty just in case.</p>

<p>thanks, van do</p>

[chrisnielsen]

<p>I remember reading somewhere a local luge operator has a D80 hooked up to trip each time a person goes past, so they can sell them a photo of their visit. The D80 in question had AFAIK over a million clicks on it and was still going strong.</p>

[areliano_decotentin]

<p>True as noted above, I have done a lot of "video" at 3fps on my d40, and have put more than 40k clicks on it in 11 months. To get some perspective, the one lens I use is (slightly) older than me and will go for decades to come - the d40 is just a sensor with a shelf life of a couple years. Photography is just a piece of glass and a piece of "film" right? How much is the minimum I could have spent on forty thousand exposures of film...</p>

[sam_kenny]

<p>The activation number at which a shutter gives up the ghost almost certainly has a gaussian distribution aka bell shaped curve, and I doubt that a rational conservative company like Nikon would use 100, 000 as the point where 50% of the cameras had failed. It would be nice to know the standard deviation of such a curve along with mean, in which case we could estimate what odds you are facing. My advice is not to worry. If it fails soon, you can upgrade to a far superior D90, whose used prices are often reasonable. If it doesn't, then you will have ample opportunity to figure out the D80's metering flaws.</p>

[fernando_scherer]

<p>as far as i know, d80 is rated at 50k shutter counts. dnxx are at 150k and dx at 300k.<br /> so it could die at any moment, surely could also go to 400k, but past the rated number is a russian roulette.</p>

[hayward]

<p>It sounds like you got the $150 repair estimate directly from Nikon, but I've used them four times and each repair was between $200 to $420. $150 sounds really low.</p>