Shutter count

[Journeyman]

Hello,

I am attempting to find the shutter count on my Canon EOS 7D II.

So far without any success. I have searched the internet, reviewed the posts.
Tried the free software that is around.
Paid $7 for a software link that seems to be a dud.

Would a knowledgeable person point me in the right direction please?

Thank you, Journeyman (Dennis)

[arthurking83]

take the last photo, shouldn't matter if raw or jpg, use a good quality exif viewing program, will say it in the extended exif menu.

if you don't have an exif viewer installed on your computer(Mac or PC?) try ExiftoolGUI(do a google search for it).
If you're on PC, ExiftoolGUI is easy to operate.
Download it(zip file) and just unzip it.
It should already have the main file it needs already in the package.
Just run(doubleclick) the exiftoolgui.exe file. No need to install, just runs as is.

If you get this done OK and you see the program, in the program window go across to the metadata side of the window and click the ALL tab.
In the long column of data available, approx 2/3rds of the way down the list will be 'shutter count'.

Maybe a bit confusing set of instructions if you have no experience, but once done a few times, it's easy to understand.

- - - Updated - - -

a small side note: if you use Adobe software on your images, there is a chance that exif will be edited/suppressed in some way on a the final file.
I would use the exif program on a raw file to be sure.

[Journeyman]

Thanks Arthur,
It is much appreciated.
Kind regards, JM

[Journeyman]

Good day,

Chasing down a Canon shutter count can be challenging.

Canon themselves don’t offer the count as a quickly accessible option.

I tried a few options most of which did not work. Apparently the info total is not embedded in an easily accessed place in the photo file. (Canon’s info). They suggested a few software options, some of which are no longer available. The info sheet was dated 2020.

One of the most likely options was Astrophotography Tool (APT). This was a Canon suggestion. However it looks like rocket science, it is designed to be connected to the camera for astro photography. Worth pursuing I reckon.

The successful app was Shutter Count Free (pic attached). I finished up paying $9.00 for the upgrade version.

Thanks for your help,
Kind regards, Journeyman.

[arthurking83]

.....

I tried a few options most of which did not work. Apparently the info total is not embedded in an easily accessed place in the photo file. (Canon’s info). .....

The successful app was Shutter Count Free (pic attached). I finished up paying $9.00 for the upgrade version.

Thanks for your help,
Kind regards, Journeyman.

Like I said in my original reply:

Exiftool is 'THE' program to view all exif data in a file, with the caveat that the full exif data has not been concatenated in any way(looking at you Adobe!).

If you had used Canon's DPP to make a jpg, and you didn't use the remove EXIF feature to export to jpg, all exif data from the raw file will have been preserved.
But it's just easier to view the exif directly on the last(or close too) raw file you shot out of the camera using a full featured exif viewing program.

see screenshot below:

2020-11-30_175848.jpg

See the ShutterCount data listed on the RHS, which is always under the tab Maker. Maker is where, in the exif data the manufacturer stores all manner of notes from the camera at the time of the shot.
Exif data is not a simple 'thing'. It's a host of data all separated into many areas, and over the years it's been added too, and got a bit complicated.
When some programs convert from your cameras raw file system to a bitmap type file(eg. TIFF, or JPG) especially jpg, they try to remove as much data as is necessary to achieve a smaller file size.
Exif is one place where many seem to go to town and destroy as much data to save file space .. and hence smaller jpg files.

If you had any trouble using ExifToolGUI, easy to ask the question on what/how/why .. it really is easy, and help will have been provided. Works on just about every file made by any camera and manufacturer.

I still suggest you download and try it, and get your head around it ... it is very handy to know how to use it.
Exiftool is a lot more powerful than the 'addon' ExiftoolGUI. ExiftoolGUI is just a point and click window addon to the command line exiftool program.
I have no time for command line programs myself. So the GUI addon is pretty much spot on.

Note that many EXIF programs use exiftool(command line) behind the scenes.

Another easy to use program(although I'm not a big fan myself!) is IrfanView.
A little convoluted in how to get to the exif data to see it compared to a dedicated exif program.
Irfanview is an image viewing program and can edit and do other stuff too, so to be expected.
But it does show a lot of exif data too. It doesn't call shuttercount the same tho, it will say 'total pictures' .. the same thing, just different terminology.

FWIW too: over the years as I assisted folks in getting to know their gear and understanding using and doing gear, I always look into the exif data to see what settings they had on their gear.
This is where exiftool, and by extension for me, the GUI) came in handy. I would delve into the makernotes(usually deleted by many conversion programs) and see that this or that was set in a particular way and maybe better to try a different way.

eg. many folks use Auto mode for autofocus, where a single point would be the better option.
Without the makernotes data embedded into the exif, no way to know what and how to offer assistance.

Anyhow .. good to see you worked out a solution for you, but there are many out there that will work.

[Journeyman]

Thanks Arthur,
I did download the program. For some reason I could not get it to function properly. The work menus were greyed out. Unfortunately as I have grown older my maths and problem solving functioning has deteriorated measurably and the hints sheets look like hieroglyphic writings. It is distressing to some extent and really awful otherwise. Not an excuse just a reality. Positively annoying all round.

However back to the real world. I also tried PIE, an exif program that listed everything to do with the photo and the camera, although the shutter count was the current picture number. Picture Information Extraction www. picmeta.com

Having said all of that I will follow up on the exif program, a. to learn, b. I don’t like to walk away. The Astrophotographic Tool program deserves the same attention, although the light pollution around us is pretty awful. The moon is mostly clear, the stars we see are few and far between.
Thanks for the help and guidance, it is appreciated greatly,
Kind regards, Journeyman (Dennis)

[arthurking83]

Thanks Arthur,
I did download the program. For some reason I could not get it to function properly. The work menus were greyed out. Unfortunately as I have grown older my maths and problem solving functioning has deteriorated measurably ....

LOL! you and me both

The tool menu is greyed out for [Import/Export] : [Modify] : [Various] if you don't have an image selected in the main window.
So if you use the built in navigation pane(LHS) go to any folder and click on an image, those tools mentioned above become active.

The tool menu at [Program] : [Options] isn't useful for exif viewing in any way. For setting program parameters only.

Once a file has been set active(click on one) the exif tools become important only if you need to do any work on the exif data in the active image.

So in the browser/navigation pane(LHS) find you image, click it, then over on the RHS in the metadata side of the window(RHS) all your info is displayed(depending on the tab you choose to view).
Maker is important .. All is confusing .. but as the name implies everything is shown. I find I use Maker tab the most.

eg. sometimes handy to know the focus distance to the subject(mainly macros, but useful for other stuff too).

Some things that can cause issues:
Note that while the following may sound convoluted, it's actually very basic stuff!

If you downloaded the ExiftoolGUI as an entire package(zip file), most likely it's using an old version of Exiftool.
(remember the GUI part of the program name is just the easy to use Window addon to the actual exif program that is Exiftool).
So, if your camera is newer than the version of Exiftool, it may not recognise the files from your camera.

Easy fix: go to Exiftool's download page -> HERE. (hoping that you're on a PC too here, I know 0 about the Mac world)
1/. Locate the Exiftool download(in ZIP format) and download it.
2/. Unzip the folder and you will simply see an exe called exiftool(-k).exe
3/. rename the exe by just deleting the (-k_ section so that the file is only called exiftool.exe.
4/. now copy/paste or just move this renamed exe file into the unzipped ExiftoolGUI folder where the GUI exe is, it will overwrite the original older version of exiftool.exe.
* This is good! you will now have the latest version of ExiftoolGUI
* Make sure Exiftool and or GUI are not running when doing the replacement of the exe file.

That is simply all that you do with this exif program to keep it working. Once you have it for your cameras files, you don't really need to update it. Update it only for 'newer' camera and their newer file types(in the case of raw files) Will work for any jpg file type no matter how new the camera is.

I just installed PIE, looks OK. Actually "looks" better than ExiftoolGUI ->(EGUI from now on!) in that it's arranged the information in alphabetical order in the data section.
I do prefer the ability for EGUI(and Exiftool) to natively allow exif editing, without having to pay for the program.
I mean, I did pay for it(donated my $5, many years ago) .. but I like the idea of donations for a program well done rather than paying for something that don't always work, or not as useful as was initially thought to be.

One thing I used to use exiftool(via GUI) more than other programs was to add GPS data into my old D70s raw files. I use GPS a lot, so have close enough locations for almost all of the places I used to shoot around.
Once images were done, I would then find GPS co-ordinates from my GPSes and either manually enter it into the raw files or copy/paste the info into the files.
Only very early on did it go belly up, but a bug with an early version of exiftool. From then on, smooth sailing.

Sounds a bit complicated for what we now take for granted, but 15 years ago .. raw images GPS data(or geo location info) was a rare thing. Note that this was easy to do on jpg files, but not so on raw files(where I wanted the geo location data). JPG files are only good for uploading and then deleting ASAP .. raw files are where it's at!
Like I said, no longer needed, GPS gets added into the files on capture now, but nice to have the ability to do complicated stuff sometimes.

Anyhow, if you ever need a hand with problem solving, just holler. There's always someone willing to offer it.

[Journeyman]

Many humble thanks Arthur.
I will most assuredly persevere.
I like the idea of knowing the true focal length compared to manufacturers figures. I know that some of the aftermarket lenses are slightly out. eg. 389 actual/400 rated.
Kind regards,
Dennis

[arthurking83]

.....
I will most assuredly persevere.
......

If you don't need editing of exif, and just want to view data, this PIE looks quite good.
I had a deeper peek into it's guts last night.
It actually uses exiftool itself to do the exif extraction, so in reality is just another frontend(GUI) for exiftool as well.
For viewing, I'd say this is probably as much as you would need.

I'll probably use it more than EGUI just for viewing .. I like it's alphabetically structured data display

For those times if I ever need to edit exif data in some way, and command line is annoying to use .. I'll use EGUI.

I'm not sure why the shutter count program you used needs to connect to the camera to determine shutter actuations, it seems unnecessary.
Pretty much all the info of the camera you would ever require is contained within the exif data in every image. So the last image shot out of the camera will reveal all this data.

If you don't know which was your last shot image, just shoot a new one, and this will determine the last shutter count too.

In fact I see the free shutter count system as a bit of a downside compared to the exif viewing system in that:
If you bought a second hand camera and didn't know the shutter actuations at the time, but now you want to know how many there were, you would browse back to the first image you took with the camera load it into your exif program(eg. PIE or EGUI or whatever) and this image is the next number beyond the shutter count the camera had when you acquired it.
May sound like a superfluous feature, but it's really not. Can be important in some way, and one reason to know this would be say after a camera service (known as a CLA).

So as an example: you buy your camera, take a few shots. Using the exif data you know that it has 20,000 exposures(shutter count). Early on, you get it serviced to ease your mind that it's working well.
In the future(say 5 years later) .. you're not sure how many shutter actuations you've made. It's in the exif data. Lets say you find that you've shot 55K exposures(you don't necessarily keep them all tho) .. the last shot you take will tell you this too.
You then compare first shot to last shot .. etc. It may be time to do a CLA again, usually not, but every photographer uses their gear differently, so that's a user based dependency.
You would take a test shot as a reminder that it got a CLA at this point. You can tag the image with this kind of info .. etc.


While this thread began with the simple query on how to determine the 'age' of your camera .. if I don't make a determined effort to shut up! .. I can waffle on(infamous for it here!) about this and that and some other tangent, so I'll try to resist elaborating more about stuff that most folks don't care about.
if you want more info, I'm happy to elaborate.

There is so much in depth info to assist folks with mundane stuff like management and query and info and stuff, not just taking pictures.
A lot of new to photography people, or film photographers that finally switched, don't know about the mundane(and relatively easy) tidbits of tips that can make future management of files a lot easier.

eg. tagging all files, no matter how important or unimportant those files are .. may seem boring now, but once you get file numbers into the many thousands .. makes life harder if you are really into it.


EDIT: in the process of answering this thread, I also do a lot of background searching(eg. looking into this Shutter Count v1.55 software, and installing PIE and finding out it's exiftool in formalwear!), I also found this online tool you can try too.

Camera Shutter Count online resource.

You can upload a jpg(careful how you do the conversion tho, I suggest DPP on a Canon camera raw file). You can upload a raw file .. will be slow depending on your internet upload speed .. raw files are large. Don't try a tiff file!
Once it's uploaded, it just displays one solitary piece of info .. as the name implies shutter count.

[Journeyman]

Good day Arthur,
Interestingly the PIE program reads and opens the new Canon format CR3 RAW. Not a whole lot of the software available does that.
Thanks again for your help, Journeyman

[arthurking83]

AHA!!! ... OK, now I geddit!

Apologies for my 'misunderstanding' of the issue. I have to note again, I'm a Nikon user, so my experience with hardware is Nikon centric.
I like to help folks with 'technical issues', and usually OK at it, but hard to help directly without hardware to play with.
My experience with other brands comes via sample images downloaded from the net, or people directly sending to me in some way.
So I have limited non Nikon files to test with.

But researching with more depth into the dilemma you have, I can see now why you had trouble locating the shutter count info you were looking for.

First up lets blame Canon for a simple bit of info they have decided to make difficult for users(ie. product owners) to access.
Why? .. only a fool can answer.
Shutter count can be an important bit of info for owners(or potential owners) to have access too.
I can see zero harm or issue that could ever arise from knowing such information.
But Canon decided, in their infinite wisdom, to make access to this info as hard as possible.

Almost ALL manufacturers that I've seen(ie. experimented, and helped other people with) have shutter count in the exif of an image.

While shutter count info is not a vital bit of info to produce photographs(irrespective of good or bad, or whatever) .. it's still a good bit of info to have at hand if for some reason a tech issue arises.
As the owner of the device, you really have a right to know what the details of your hardware are!

Canon just made this info very hard to access. Why, any ones guess
They used to provide it in the exif data back in the day. From what I can see possibly around up to 10 or so years ago. Roughly Canon 6D era.
From then on, you needed some EOS Info utility(and a Windows PC), as they decided to remove it from image exif.
Then they decided again that only Canon service personnel are allowed to see this info .. otherwise it was up to some interested 'hacker' to produce software to see it out of the camera.
Awesome work!
They obviously have some backward reasoning for this decision, that most likely has a backward explanation for why this is info that no owner is allowed to know(easily).

I also discovered that Olympus doesn't do shutter count in exif too(since about 10 odd years ago too), but at least they have a way to find this info directly in the camera via some intricate menu manipulation.
(ie. not easy, but no need for a PC(Windows) and software and potentially hacked software .. of 'who knows how secure' potential!!

So, once again, apology for not properly understanding the issue .. coming from a 'different world' where your info is your info to have access too.
Not that Nikon are the patron saints of the holy house of 'users matter most' but I feel a little better that they haven't 'protected me' from the threat of knowledge of the condition of my camera(s) or any potential future camera I may end up getting.
Nikon also do some seriously stupid stuff too.

So just to be sure you understand where I come from, and why my previous replies. Nikon, Sony and Pentax all write shutter count data into the exif of the image. Olympus and Canon used too but stopped at some point in the past.
Shutters(mechanical types) have life cycles. They can play up, they are mechanical. Actually electromechanical, but not important.
I would expect that access to shutter count could be important in service or problematic times.

eg. say you have a camera, and it just aged past it's warranty period, and the shutter is acting up(say dragging, or sticking) and causing exposure issues.
if you can show that exposures from a specific period before warranty expired had been affected by a shutter issue, then you could have a ground to receive warranty support after it expired .. as long as you could show that the shutter issue started during the warranty period.

Why a manufacturer would eliminate this from their product??? OK, you make your own conclusions.
That one, teeny weeny, bit of data in the exif is not going to bloat the exif in any way .. other than the few bits of data it is.

Good day Arthur,
Interestingly the PIE program reads and opens the new Canon format CR3 RAW. Not a whole lot of the software available does that.
Thanks again for your help, Journeyman

yep, many more if you're interested to check out.

FSViewer will(as is, just have the latest version)
IrfanView will(if you try this, make sure to have the latest plugins for it too .. easy steps to follow to get it going)
As before, ExiftoolGUI will too(just note that if you use it as is from unzipping it, will not, as it will need an updated exiftool.exe file) if you want to get this going, I can explain it again.
Latest version of Canon's DPP will too. I found its editing and raw conversion to be very good. In some ways better than Nikon software, in other ways a bit inferior(tools and abilities at specific things).

Obviously the high priced (and ongoingly priced!!) software from various vendors will too. I'm very pedantic about value for money software .. not a lot of paid for software that I feel is as good as the asking price suggests, but this depends on your needs.


Yeah! once again sorry for the run about and possibly making your head hurt a little.
My new advice is .. get a Nikon!!!(or Pentax or Sony)