EOS Camera shutter counts

September 29, 2013

If you run linux (as I do), install gphoto2 and then do this (with the camera connected via a USB cable: 

gphoto2 --get-config /main/status/shuttercounter
If you are a Windows user, you may have luck with "EOS Info", but it only supports a small set of cameras:

I depends on something called the EOS SDK, which ought to be worth looking into.

The agreement you have to sign seems to indicate that any software you develop using the SDK becomes property of Canon, and prohibits any recoding or reverse engineering. Unfortunate.

Online shutter counts

The first link did not work with my 1D Mark III -- I sent a jpg file, no telling what it really wants. People say that this program does not work with the 1Diii, but does work with the 7D and 1Div.

Apparently as of the 1d Mark III, Canon has made the shutter count something "secret". They can read it out, but you cannot.

More on using gphoto2

Just to see if the clever gphoto2 hackers had figured out how to get the Canon "proprietary" shutter count information, I gave gphoto2 a test drive. I connected a USB cable and then hooked up my EOS 1D Mark III. This yielded the following in /var/log/messages: 
Sep 29 16:37:40 trona kernel: [611985.671073] usb 1-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona kernel: [611985.758156] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=04a9, idProduct=3144
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona kernel: [611985.758161] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona kernel: [611985.758163] usb 1-1.3: Product: Canon Digital Camera
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona kernel: [611985.758165] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Canon Inc.
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 5: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.3"
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 5 was not an MTP device
Sep 29 16:37:41 trona colord: Device added: sysfs-Canon_Inc.-Canon_Digital_Camera
Then a quick recon with gphoto gives: 
gphoto2 --auto-detect
Model                          Port                                            
----------------------------------------------------------
USB PTP Class Camera           usb:001,006     

gphoto2 --get-config /main/status/shuttercounter
Label: Camera Status Information
So, either the Canon 1D Mark III is not making available its shutter count information (the most likely thing) or gphoto2 is not wise enough to fetch it. Typing: 
gphoto2 --list-all-config
Shows quite a lot of information, but not the shutter count.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Uncle Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org