PSA: Your Camera’s Shutter is Fine. Stop Worrying

A little while back, I read one of the most ridiculous things that I’ve ever read: and it has to do with a camera’s shutter. This is mostly affecting the used camera market in the way that people often ask about the shutter count on the camera. In fact, folks won’t buy it if the shutter count is too high. This, truthfully, is a whole lot of misinformed nonsense. And here’s the proof of it.

To recap here, folks won’t buy a used camera online if the shutter count is too high. This is because they’re frightened that the camera will suddenly stop working and that they’ll essentially be buying a brick. That’s false. First off, this is why I typically only buy used camera gear that has some sort of weather resistance. Weather resistance and build quality is something that we’ve talked about very often. It doesn’t have to do with going out into the rain and snow. Instead, it has to do with how the camera will weather over time. Something that’s more resistant has a better chance at having a long product life.

Don’t believe me? Well, think about the vintage camera market.

How do the Nikon F2 and the Leica M6 still have working shutters even into today? Do you really think that people buy these cameras and never run rolls of film through them? And even cheaper cameras like the Fujifilm Natura S still work perfectly fine. Those cameras are far older and most likely have fired off far more frames than something like a Nikon D850.

The truth is that even though a camera manufacturer rates a shutter for a certain amount of life, that’s essentially just so that they can cover their own tails from lawsuits or anything else legally. They do the same thing for weather resistance — while they’ll say that it’s built it in for a product, they won’t honor problems with it as part of their warranty program. It’s insane.

It’s also a point that they can tell their repair departments. Recently, I sent my Leica M6 in for a CLA and the company told me that nearly everything on the camera needed to be redone for a cost of around $1,000. When I looked at the itemized list, I said that it was garbage and asked them to just calibrate the rangefinder. The company wanted to replace nearly every part of the M6, including the shutter. But I didn’t want that.

Let me put it this way, if you’re buying what was a high-end camera at one point, why would they not put high-end design features into it? By that, I mean higher-end professional DSLRs and even higher-end mirrorless cameras at this point. They’ll work for sure.

For example, the original Sony a9 is almost 10 years old. Trust me when I say this: it still works just fine. In fact, I own the original Sony a7 and that works perfectly fine too.