Firstly, what exactly is your shutter count and why does it matter?

Your shutter is the system that allows light to hit the sensor of the camera, it moves (most of the time) incredibly fast. In fact you can see the shutter of a Canon camera here in slow motion. Because the shutter moves so fast, it is the major component to fail in a camera, and when they fail they tend to fail fairly catastrophically! Canon actually officially lists expected shutter count actuation’s and states that the average camera will be between 50,000 and 150,000. However some 5D users have cameras working at over 8 million! You can see the expected life expectancy of your camera here.

So, you’re either buying or selling a camera and the shutter count question comes up, so how do you find out what your shutter count is?

Here is how you find it on a Nikon
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And for a Canon camera:
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