life of M8 and M9 by acctuations

[vb_vmb]

hi, greetings to all first,
i have been closely watching this forum, pepole do give reference to Nos. of shutter used on Leica M8/M9 bodies to show its usage.
people looks worried if the actual acctuation on these bodies reach 15000 mark,
there are reference of change of shutter (new) with upgardes,
to my knowledge a film camera body is used to appox (15000/36) =416 rolls of films, thats nothing for leica.
i have used Nikon digital bodies for this much w/o much wear and tear.
all are welcome to comment on actual life of these $$$$:clap: bodies

 

[Jan Brittenson]

15k? You mean 150k?

 

[otumay]

More like it.

 

[vb_vmb]

no, i mean 15000 sutters/accutations

 

[otumay]

That sounds unacceptably low to me.

 

[saxshooter]

I think some users have chosen to upgrade their shutters to get another year's warranty out of their M8, or to make it more "quiet". It's not a reflection of the life of the original shutter.

 

[jonoslack]

Oh - I don't think the 15,000 actuations is relevant to anything. Lots of people changed (upgraded) their M8 shutters from the 'noisy' one with 1/8000 sec, to the quieter one with 1/4000 sec.
Both of my M9's did way over 15,000 actuations, and my M9's are probably beyond that point. Shutters do fail, but I've not had one which failed.

 

[Bob]

I have found that shutter failure is rather a random thing and not necessarily directly connected to the number of actuations. I had one failure at a couple of thousand and another lasted well over 30,000 before I had it upgraded.
-bob

 

[ShiroKuro]

It may be random ,it just does not feel that way when the shutter eats it self with well under 5,000 actuations and the warranty is up ..... I was starting to relax and just enjoy my M8 and thats when the shutter went ....there was always this feeling that something was going to go wrong with either the sensor or the shutter ....I cleared one issue and got the other ; ) any way no problem ,I'll get it fixed and the i year warranty .... The camera is awesome to shoot with as is the M9 which I had the pleasure of using today for the first time ..... Can't wait to get mine fixed, but for now it's back to the M4 and the Makina 670 W .....

 

[ramosa]

I think that's the reality of digital RFs. They're not going to last 30 years

 

[thrice]

Copal makes the shutters for Leica as well as Nikon. So your point is moot. Also Pentax, Mamiya etc...

 

[01af]

15,000 shutter actuations is nothing. For a digital camera that gets actually used, this is the equivalent of a year or so of usage. For a camera that gets real heavy use, it's more like four or six weeks.

You may start worrying when the number of shutter actuations approaches 50,000 (for a cheap entry-level camera) or 150,000 (for a serious camera). And yes, some working pros actually burn up one shutter every two years or so ... but that means shooting ten rolls of 135-36 film (or 30 rolls of 120 film) per day consistently for at least 200 days per year, always with the same body. In our digital days, even some amateurs do that (or rather, the equivalent number of digital frames).

However most shooters, pro or amateur, hardly shoot more than 10,000 - 20,000 frames per year per camera body, because those who really shoot awfully much typically use more than one body. So in terms of MTBF—or should I say, MNOFBF (mean number of frames before failure)?—a typical camera shutter is good for, say, 8 to 15 years of continuous use ... on average. Single cases of exceptionally short or exceptionally long life can, and do, happen. Most digital cameras get retired and replaced for all kinds of reasons but not for shutter failure.

By the way, I've had my M9 for seven months now, and the shutter actuation counter is at 5,500. That's just short of 10,000 frames per year. At this rate, I'd expect the shutter to keep working for at least 10 years.

 

[ampguy]

In my experience, if you use it in single mode, and not the continuous mode, the shutter will last forever.