Cancount Can't Count 1DsII actuations?

I am selling a used 1Ds Mark II, which is a USA model bought new from Dell in Dec. '06, and several prospective buyers have asked me how many "actuations" are on the camera. I sent them a file to review with their "cancount" software, and they claim it says there are 51k actuations. Looking at my Lightroom archive metadata browser, I've only got about 20k images taken with that camera serial number. This stands to logic because it also says I have 39k images shot in all of 2007, and I shoot two cameras at once and rarely throw anything away.

I have since discovered there is a way to browse the shutter count in the advanced section of the file info in PS. Looking at the first shot I took with the camera, it starts about about 30k. The camera was certainly new out of the box- no way it would look new if someone before me had taken 30,000 pics with it!!

Has anyone else run into this? Does Canon not start their counter at 0?

Cory Silken said:

I sent them a file to review with their "cancount" software, and they claim it says there are 51k actuations.

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I have no idea if and how accurate the Cancount number is. If I'm not mistaken, only Canon service centers can reliably read the actuations counter. Maybe they're willing to get you that count in writing.

Bart

P.S. I just tried EXIFTool from Phil Harvey, and it's "Shutter Count" seems to be very accurate for my 1Ds2 Raw files (when counting from zero). You could give it a try and see what you get.

P.P.S. When I checked my 1Ds3 EXIF, it has skipped the same number of 'actuations' as my file number did when I switched cards a while ago. So apparently, the number from the EXIF is not a 100% accurate indicator of the actual situation, it can be erroneously changed by the camera firmware!! Maybe the Canon service people can get a different number.

C1 vers 3.7 could read it...

Michael Fontana said:

C1 vers 3.7 could read it...

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Bonsoir Michael

How that's?

Bonsoir Nicolas,

I think, it was in the files's info palette, within C1, prior to develop. I couldn't find it though in the 4 version. And I can't verify it, as 4 is running here, no 3 anymore.

Struggling through my archiv, I did see that PS shows the shot numbers, if the RAW has been developed by ACR, in the file-info-window, in PS:

extended/http:// ns.adobe.com/exif/1.0/aux.

behind: aux.Image Number:

I think, it was in the files's info palette, within C1, prior to develop

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not for the 1Ds3 files…

Hi, Cory,

Cory Silken said:

I am selling a used 1Ds Mark II, which is a USA model bought new from Dell in Dec. '06, and several prospective buyers have asked me how many "actuations" are on the camera. I sent them a file to review with their "cancount" software, and they claim it says there are 51k actuations. Looking at my Lightroom archive metadata browser, I've only got about 20k images taken with that camera serial number. This stands to logic because it also says I have 39k images shot in all of 2007, and I shoot two cameras at once and rarely throw anything away.

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To the best of my knowledge, no modern EOS camera encodes the actuation count in the metadata.

Many metadata reading tools report a data item that is the "frame index number" (for example, in a 20D that would be, for example, "256-5687". There are recurrent flareups of the misunderstanding that this is somehow the actuation count. But each of these "urban legends" turns out to be bogus.

I have since discovered there is a way to browse the shutter count in the advanced section of the file info in PS. Looking at the first shot I took with the camera, it starts about about 30k. The camera was certainly new out of the box- no way it would look new if someone before me had taken 30,000 pics with it!!

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My guess is that this is some form of the frame serial number, perhaps mis-decoded, perhaps correctly decoded but presented in a way that causes it to be misinterpreted. There is a lot of both of those going around.

Doug_Kerr said:

My guess is that this is some form of the frame serial number, perhaps mis-decoded, perhaps correctly decoded but presented in a way that causes it to be misinterpreted. There is a lot of both of those going around.

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The mentioned methode with ACR/PS-Cs-2 showed the correct number of shots with the 1 Ds-2.

If it doesn't works with Nicolas's 1 Ds-3 - or other cams - a different coding could be the reason for it.

Early versions of Cancount (including the free version) are not accurate for Mark II cameras, at least for frame counts above 65k. Neither is the PS2 method. To the best of my knowledge, C1 is accurate, as is the free utility 1DCount. Note, however, it seems that loading settings from another camear will reset the frame counter to the source camera's figure. (For more than you probably care to know about this topic, see this FM thread.)

Canon apparently, and inexplicably, did away with the frame count field in the Mark III bodies. (Non-1-series bodies have never had it.)

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Nill Toulme said:

Canon apparently, and inexplicably, did away with the frame count field in the Mark III bodies.

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That's not the case, as far as I can see with EXIFtool. There are both a "File number" and "Shutter Count" field in the EXIF data.

However, the point is that the fields are not 100% reliable. The fields are set by the camera's firmware, but when something goes wrong (as I have experienced) e.g. when reading from different cards, the numbers can jump to a wrong value.

Bart

I don't know about the Mark III (and that's the first indication I've seen that it does have the odometer intact), but with the other cameras, while it's true that sometimes inserting a card that's been used in another camera without formatting it first will reset the image number, it does not do that to the actuation counter. AFAIK, the actuation counter is accurate (if read and interpreted accurately) on pre-Mark III 1-series bodies unless (a) it's been reset by Canon (which they reportedly do, or used to, sometimes but not always when replacing the shutter), or (b) it's been reset as the result of uploading the settings from another body, as I mentioned above.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Nill Toulme said:

Note, however, it seems that loading settings from another camear will reset the frame counter to the source camera's figure.

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Thank you all for the input. My guess is that this must what happened, as I do have another body with a similar count to what this one is reporting.

I think it would be a good thing if Canon got rid of this counter because every idiot seems to be using it as a gague of the value of a used camera, similar to milage of a car. But the reality is a camera that needs a new shutter is only worth $350 less than a new one, because that's the cost of a shutter replacement and this doesn't have anything to do with the condition of the rest of the camera.