Overheard a guy at a garage sale say 'shutter count is everything' and it got me thinking

I was browsing tables at a flea market in Tacoma last weekend and this older guy was telling his friend that shutter count is the only thing that matters when buying a used camera. He was dead serious, like nothing else. But I've been fixing cameras for 12 years now and I just don't buy that. I've seen cameras with 50,000 clicks that were totally worn out because the owner never cleaned them or kept them in a dry place. Meanwhile I've fixed old Nikons with 200,000 on the counter that just needed a new mirror bumper and ran smooth for years after. Shutter count is just a number if the camera was stored in a damp basement or dropped once. Anybody else run into folks who obsess over shutter count while ignoring the real wear and tear?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_burns91mo ago

Yeah, I've met that guy at pretty much every camera shop I've been in lol. He's the one who thinks shutter count is like a car's odometer and nothing else matters. But honestly, I've opened up bodies with 30k clicks that were full of dust and corrosion from someone leaving them in a humid garage, and they were basically junk. Meanwhile I've got a buddy still using a D700 with 300k+ that works fine because he cleans it and stores it right. If you drop a camera once or let moisture get in, that shutter count becomes totally irrelevant. I always tell people to check the lens mount for wear and feel how smooth the buttons are before even looking at the counter.

michael8951mo ago

Nah man hard disagree on this one. Shutter count is still the single best data point you've got for judging a used camera, period. Sure you can find beat up low count bodies but that's the exception not the rule, and most buyers aren't opening up camera boards to check for dust. The guy with the 300k D700 is the outlier, not the norm. Majority of shutters start getting inconsistent around 150k and you're gambling on repair costs after that. Checking lens mount wear is good advice but doesn't tell you anything about the mechanical lifespan left in the body. A garage stored camera might look rough but a high count camera has actual miles on its moving parts that you can't undo.