The colourful haired one hiding behind a D2H.
The colourful haired one hiding behind a D2H.
Update (1st May 2010): it's now less than a hundred shots short of 383,000 shutter actuations and still going strong. Hell yeah! :D I'm leaving the rest of the article as I originally wrote it.
You read that right: Over three hundred and seventy nine thousand shutter actuations. Seriously, check out the EXIF from shot #379,223 (if you're wondering how you find it, the field you're looking for is "Shutter Count"), or download the image and dump the EXIF yourself.
That is insane by any measure. If I were to take pictures at the D2H's full 8 frames a second (an impressive sound, by the way; almost, but not entirely, unlike a slightly quieter Praktica MTL3, on crack -- here's the D2H shutter sound), I'd have to hold the shutter button for more than thirteen hours to get that number of actuations. That number, in case you missed it, being over three hundred and seventy nine thousand. Yes.
I wonder if that's some kind of record. Probably not, but there's only one guy above me in the Shutter Life Expectancy Database entry for the D2H, at 921,452, and right after he resubmitted with 92,152, which means he probably made a typo.
It's a little bit battered. And by "a little bit" I mean "really fucking":
(apologies for the crappy photo, I was rushing)
Awesome. Hey, if you can't be a pro, do what I do: buy battered cameras so that you can look like one! Few people can tell the difference, y'know.
The USB port cover went walkies some time ago:
So it still works, after over three hundred and seventy nine thousand shutter actuations. Say hi to shot #379,223:
Adele. Nikon D2H, AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D at f/2, 1/80
at ISO 200.
And #379,339:
Twiggy. Nikon D2H, 18-55mm DX at 18mm wide-open, ISO 200
at 1/160.
I paid £250 for this, plus another hundred quid a piece on a 50mm f/1.8D and an 18-55mm II. I started out looking for a small, light D40. I got curious and ended up with this, which is the largest and heaviest man-made object in the world:
The Nikon D2H dwarfing a Nikon D70.
Yeah, so go me. :/ I think that's a little too much to pay for a D2H at all, let alone one whose shutter might explode at any moment. When that happens, I'll probably get a D1 for kicks. Heh heh.
(If anyone else has one of these with a crazy number of actuations, I'd love to hear from you, especially if you can beat my high score.)
