Checking Shutter count on your E-P1 and E-P2

Andy, thanks so much for this thread. Inquiring minds will be happy to have this.

 

OP -

You rock.

That is all.

 

Same instructions work on the Olympus E-PL1.

 

I finally got it to work, cool! Very useful info!
2186 shots taken...

 

Thanks for the tip.

I just got the refurbished E-P1 and checked the shutter count, only 402 clicks!

 

Cool.

This post reminds me of Contra.
UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A B A SELECT START.

 

I was thinking of the same thing when I was doing it.:smile:

 

Anyone knows what's the maximum number of pictures registered by the counter when the the sensor of PENs should be replaced? What's the life expectancy of the sensor in a PEN?

 

Unless you burn holes into the microlenses / bayer matrix layers by pointing the camera lens directly into the sun for extended periods of time, I wouldn't worry about the sensor. And if a handful of pixels become stuck, you can still map them out of the picture without much degradation for quite a long time.

The question is more about the mechanical shutter life expectancy. I haven't read any estimate for this. Usually, pro Olympus bodies like the E-1 / E-3 / E-5 are tested good for 150.000 actuations. But consumer level cameras (all brands) have shorter lifespan, about (generally) 20.000 to 50.000 actuations. This figures are to be taken with a grain of salt, as they are established from stress tests that continuously fire the shutter over a short time frame. On the one hand, real life usage pattern is more relaxed, so the shutter can have a much longer life expectancy. But on the other hand, some materials (plastics) used for parts of the shutter can degrade on their own as time goes by even without using the camera, and the final shutter count can be dramatically reduced (the Canon film camera EOS-100 was notorious for such a defect, as was the T-90 before it - my father in law's EOS-100 died well before the 2.000 actuations, pity, he didn't used it much and it was otherwise a very fine camera for its time).

In a pinch : shoot, shoot a lot, and have no regrets. Like Achilles, better a short and glorious life than a long and dull one.

Cheers,

 

Just discovered that my camera bought as new, has around 3200 shots on its counter
I hope that its sensor will pass the 20000 actuations limit if not more...

 

LiveView use is 0

In the service menu, what is the "R" metric for LiveView? My E-P1 has 380 shutter actuations but 0 LiveViews shots. I thought the E-P1 had live view all the time. What am I missing here?

 

Interesting. Holding menu down while turning it on does nothing special. I wonder if my E-PL1 has some funny setting.

 

That's normal : you turn on the camera holding 'menu', when the screen appears you release the button and press it again to enter the menu. And then you follow the recipe from there.

 

Great tip... I cannot wait to learn to use the PL2 more...

 

Just tried this on my E-P1, and I'm just wondering, its showing a higher shutter count than I've taken pictures with it (60 count, I've taken about 20 shots maybe) and one use of external flash. Does this mean my E-P1 was a refurb unit? Or do they test it at the factory?

 

Just tried it, and works on my E-PL2 too, thanks! I think the code gave me 3000 bonus shutter cycles.

 

Just to revive this post for new users.

I am terrified, as my E-PL1 is showing now more than 28000.... and my home folders show 9800 of those survive to haunt my disk.

 

If I spend $900 on a camera -- it better not come with 3200 shutter releases already. But what is an acceptable number of shutter releases on a new camera?