How to find shutter count activations on Canon MkII

[Clemo]

Hi everybody, just joined the forum. Please could anybody help me, I want to sale my Canon 5D MkII but I need to know shutter activations. I think I've tried shutter count.com but I didn't work. Thank you for reading   Clemo

[TCampbell]

Canon doesn't have a method to show the shutter count but will tell you what your shutter count is if you send the camera in (normally you probably wouldn't send a camera just to get a shutter count, but if you were to send it in for cleaning or service and you request the shutter count, they'll tell you.)

But it turns out there are a handful of applications that can read the shutter count. 

I use an application named "ShutterCount" which works on my 5D II.  The developer is Dire Studio.  It's available on Mac and Windows.

[Clemo]

As I said before I've have used shutter count.com and didn't work,any other suggestions?

[jrhoffman75]

Shuttercount.com is not the same as what Tim offered.

www.direstudios.com

[ebiggs1]

Whether any of the commercial actuation readers, or web based, give an accurate count or not is questionable.  The only and I mean only place to get the true correct actual count is from Canon.

[RobertTheFat]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

Whether any of the commercial actuation readers, or web based, give an accurate count or not is questionable.  The only and I mean only place to get the true correct actual count is from Canon.

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Canon tries to keep the true shutter count as inaccessible as possible, and it's actually a benefit to the user that they do. If everyone knew how to find the shutter count, someone would surely figure out how to hack it, and it would no longer be believable. As it is, if you buy a used camera and the seller is able to provide a Canon-certified count, you can have at least some confidence that it's accurate.

[TCampbell]

It's fairly easy to test. Read the shutter count, take some exposures (a known count), then re-read the shutter count to verify it increased correctly.

[RobertTheFat]

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@TCampbell wrote:
It's fairly easy to test. Read the shutter count, take some exposures (a known count), then re-read the shutter count to verify it increased correctly.

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The fact that it advances correctly now tells you nothing about whether it was set back sometime in the past. Leaving it so that it didn't advance correctly would be a rookie mistake on the hacker's part.

[ebiggs1]

"The fact that it advances correctly now tells you nothing ..."

Bob from Boston is correct.

It tells you nothing no matter.  There is a reason it is off to begin with.  It is not advancing in normal increments.  The on line and commercial readers are not reliable.