Chico 1948 Loc: Cincinnati

Just checked my D7000, 4045 clicks so far. Camera Shutter count says I have used 3% of my camera's expected life. Thank you to all for making this information available. I learn something everyday when reading the Ugly.

Pete

CaptainBobBrown

Using exiftool on an iMac on my Nikon DSLR images I was amazed at the amount of actual exif data available. Since Macs use the bash shell it's not hard to filter out the exact lines one wants to see. For example, the most common phrases used to denote shutter count include the word "Shutter" so piping exiftool output into grep lets one extract the 9 or 10 lines in the exiftool output which contain the word "Shutter". So here's what I do to get one of my Nikon DSLR's shutter counts on my iMac:

1) start terminal.
2) Change directory to the path where you've got a recent image (ideally the most recent) taken with the target camera. I use Finder to ensure the path and date of the target picture file.
3) print the working directory set in step 2 to confirm you've gotten to the correct location of the photo in question.
4) run exiftool on the file and pipe it's output to "grep" specifying the shutter count phrase used in your manufacturer's exif records, typically "Shutter".

An example sequence from my machine:

cd ./photographs/'Bosque del Apache'/landscapes
pwd
exiftool _rdb6779.nef | grep "Shutter"

Produces:
ISO Auto Shutter Time : 1/200 s
Electronic Front-Curtain Shutter: off
...
Shutter Count : 16788
...

Of course, now that I know the phrase Nikon uses is "Shutter Count" I can simplify the output:

exiftool _rdb6779.nef|grep "Shutter Count"

to get one line of output:

Shutter Count : 16788

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

A couple of things might also be of interest...

At least initially I always run grep with a -i option to ignore case. It's easier than typing the caps, for me at least. But it really shines on a search where I don't know what it is!

But once you do know the exact tag name, this way (which is case insensitive) gets just one tag per option. So you can retrieve just one tag or half a dozen different tags with one command.

exiftool -shuttercount -model dsc_0000.nef

Also try that with just one -s, and then with two of them for different output formats.

Another handy thing to know is how to change tag values in a file. To set the Copyright tag and also change the Shutter Count, do this

exiftool -copyright="Public Domain" -shuttercount=101010101 dsc_0001.jpg

EXIFTOOL is extremely useful when writing shell scripts because of the ability to retrieve metadata values from image files.

usken65

Take the lens off. The shutter count is on a little clicker in the top left corner of camera when looking inside.