Checking Shutter Count on the Sony a7iii (Easy!)

Looking to sell your camera and want to get an accurate shutter count? Bought an a7iii used and want to check out many pictures it’s taken?

Luckily, it’s ridiculously easy to check your shutter count on the a7iii.

In order to not waste your time like other websites, here are the steps below.

Feel free to keep reading afterwards if you want more “fluff” and information.

Quick Steps

Take a RAW (not JPEG!) image with the camera
Transfer the photo to your PC/Mac (with SD card/usb)
Drag and drop the image into a shutter count site

That’s literally it.

If you’d like to read a bit more about the subject, feel free to keep scrolling.

Other Stuff

What is the shutter life of the Sony a7iii?

Every camera has an expected “shutter life”.

As with any technology, your camera may fail to meet it or, in most cases, vastly exceed the “limit” of its life.

The Sony a7iii, in particular, claims to have a shutter life of 200,000 actuations.

This means that, in theory, the a7iii can shoot around 200k pictures before it should, statistically, fail.

camera on gimbal — _{The camera is rating for 200k shutter actuations. That is A LOT!}

camera on tripod — _{The camera is rating for 200k shutter actuations. That is A LOT!}

Extending Shutter Life

The simple truth of the matter is that sometimes electronics just fail prematurely. However, there are two main ways to extend the life of your camera.

Keep it Clean

First off, and this may seem stupidly obvious but: just keep it clean.

If you’re on a beach with high winds, don’t take the lens off and let in a lot of sand.

Don’t handle your camera with dirt-covered hands. Simple stuff.

woman on beach — _{Don’t dunk your camera into water or leave it sitting in a pile of sand and you’ll probably be fine.}

Use Electronic Shutter

Second, you can turn on the “electronic shutter” option in your camera menus.

This, technically, forces the camera to not open and close the shutter, thus extending the life.

However, electronic shutter (also sometimes called silent mode) can negatively affect image quality by: increasing banding, limited your ISO slightly, and some other things.

I touch on this in a bit more detail in my huge a7iii review if you’re interested in learning a bit more about it.

vatican indoors — _{Electronic shutter (silent mode) is great when photographing places where you need to be quiet, but it’s also great for extending your shutter life!}

Replacing Your Shutter

Finally, if your shutter does actually fail (although that is, frankly, unlikely), it’s fairly reasonably priced to outright replace it.

You can get the part from Sony’s website for around $150 and either replace it yourself (if you have the knowledge) or pay a camera shop.

Thankfully, I haven’t needed to replace my shutter, but from what I understand most repair shops will charge you around $300-$500 (USD).

screws and bolts on white background — If your shutter does fail, you can repair it yourself (just don’t lose all the tiny screws…) or take it into a camera shop to be fixed.

Should I worry about shutter count?

So should you even worry about the shutter count of a camera?

The simple answer is: not really.

Shutter life is a basic metric to determine the “average” lifetime of a camera. It’s really no different than saying “a car is reliable because it gets to X miles/km”.

Your camera won’t shut off or disable itself just because you hit the theoretical maximum shutter life.

Don’t stress, just keep shooting pictures.

Checking Shutter Count on Sony a7iii (Easy!)