Time for a tune up?

BBones

I have had my 1D mark2 for over a year now and I know that I have taken more then 300,000 shots with it. Is there a tune up or scheduled maintence or something that I should have sent my camera in for? It seems to work fine (outside of vertical banding at times) but I wasn't sure if after you hit the 300k mark if you are on borrowed time with the unit.

ziggy53

BBones wrote:

I have had my 1D mark2 for over a year now and I know that I have taken more then 300,000 shots with it. Is there a tune up or scheduled maintence or something that I should have sent my camera in for? It seems to work fine (outside of vertical banding at times) but I wasn't sure if after you hit the 300k mark if you are on borrowed time with the unit.

You are considerably over the mean lifetime of the shutter mechanism. (Canon rates the shutter on the 1D MKII at 200,000 actuations.) It is only a matter of time before either the shutter or mirror assembly will give you problems or fail entirely.

If you earn money with the camera, you should at least have a reliable backup camera to switch to if needed.

Look for telling signs of impending failure like flash sync problems or shutter "striping", especially at high shutter speeds.

If you need the camera for a remote shoot, and if you can justify the cost, a preemptive service by Canon might be indicated. Some sports shooters replace the entire shutter box and mirror assembly before failure and after the rated cycles are exceeded.

Partly, it depends how much a risk-taker "you" are, tempered by the ramifications of failure. If you have a backup camera, and if you "chimp" and verify your shots frequently, I think it OK to keep using the camera until failure.

Obviously, a "big" money shoot would cause me to change strategies. ("Big" money shoot hasn't ever happened to me, so not a problem. )

Best,

BBones

Any idea on the cost and possibly the turn around time for the shutter and mirror assemblies? I do have a reliable 20D as my backup.

ziggy53

BBones wrote:

Any idea on the cost and possibly the turn around time for the shutter and mirror assemblies? I do have a reliable 20D as my backup.

I've not had it done, my 1D MKII is still low count, but I hear reliable costs of $350-$600USD. (Depending on what they replace.) Turn-around varies but if you are registered in CPS you should get priority treatment.

BBones

Cps?

ziggy53

BBones wrote:

Cps?

In Europe it is formalized at:
http://www.cps.canon-europe.com/membership/whatisCPS.jsp

In the US it appears to be less formal. I hope to apply soon now, but the best information I have says to send an e-mail request to Canon USA:

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0604/westfall.html
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ContactCanonAct

DJ-S1

BBones wrote:

I have had my 1D mark2 for over a year now and I know that I have taken more then 300,000 shots with it...

300,000 / 365 = 800+ shots/day! Wow!

wmstumme

I was just starting to do the math in my head when I got down to the last post and saw someone else was already there. If you're not wearing out the camera, what about you're computer? 300,000 x 3 MB (To use a moderate image size) would equal over 900,000 MB, or almost a terrabyte of images (if my math is anywhere close).

If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing with that kind of volume, and how do you process, store, archive that many shots? Your processes must be super efficient!

cmason

Interested in the answer myself, but if someone is using this camera for action sports, where it is highly suitable, 300,000 could come easy: imagine multiple frames per second on every dunk or contested shot in an NBA game, and one could easily shoot thousands per game. Of course you could end up with only a handful of useful shots...

BBones

Multiple track days per week, 8 hours per day with bikes coming at me non stop. Easily 2000 shots in a day. Sometime 4 day straight shoots (Fri-Mon) with track days sandwiching the races. Club nights galore. And then my personal stuff and chasing my daughter around with a cam, family events (I get to be the "family photographer". Defragging the computer is a weekly thing once the race season gets into full swing while I am sleeping and in between uploads.

I didn't say I kept everything. I do have a monster of a CD book though full with DVD's. I need to find a new solution though for storing them, it just doesn't look "right" with all this gear, computers, screens and then a faux leather CD book holding everything that I have shot.

natephoto

BBones wrote:

I didn't say I kept everything. I do have a monster of a CD book though full with DVD's. I need to find a new solution though for storing them, it just doesn't look "right" with all this gear, computers, screens and then a faux leather CD book holding everything that I have shot.

Although I don't think I have nearly as many images as you do,, I've started using an external firewire 800 (faster than 400) hardrive. [Not sure if you have FW 800 since it sounds like you have a PC with the defraging? - a card can be installed I think] It works really well because it doesn't take up extra space on my computer's hard drive. I keep recent shots on both the external and the computer, as a backup, but the external is pretty reliable, and I guess if you were concerned more about backup, you could use two hardrives, making them exactly the same. Then, you could just unplug one and store it somewhere else (firesafe box?) while not transferring files/images. The externals come pretty big now-a-days.. I've seen up to a terabyte on one, but I think they get even higher. -Expensive, but probably more cost efficient in the long run.

Hope this helps!

claudermilk

All that on DVD?! :wow I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that much work was depending on the reliability of burned optical media. You probably get an idea I don't trust DVDs for archiving by now.

Definitely go with hard drives, either external or an internal-bay removable. Of course back those up as well. On the whole it's both a whole lot more convenient with up to 750GB on one drive right now, and a whole lot more reliable.

I can totally believe the volume with event photography like that. I do dance events, and the "worst" one was 8000 shots over three days...on a 20D.

BBones

I am getting a firewire 800 PC Card soon since the new Sandisk Extreme IV's need it. Can you recommend me a good monster HDD and remember that I am definately not made of money (otherwise the 1D mark 2 would be sent in for repairs already and I would have a Mark3 on order )

cmason

two recommendations for you:

1) buy a hard drive enclosure, and then get a honking harddrive you find on sale. Staples, Frys, even Best Buy have giveaway, rebate sales on hard drives every weekend. I got a 320GB for $59 the other day. Put it in a $29 CompUSA USB enclosure, and I have daily backups. When its full, I go buy another. Yes there are Firewire 800 enclosures too, but USB 2.0 speed is now equivalent to Firewire, so why bother?

2) Personal NAS enclosures. Enclosures such as the NetGear Storage Central are nice solutions at a low cost. This particular one is $99 most places, and can hold two harddrives. So go purchase two 500GB drives, and you have a choice of one 1TB spanned drive, or run it in a RAID mirroring mode for only 500GB, but super duper safe as the second hard drive is an exact copy. This whole business connects to your router, and is accessible over your home LAN. The only downside is the network becomes a limiting factor in transfering files, as most run only 100MB/s...though you can hook Gigabit ethernet to it... This works great for backup runs, but likely not so well for realtime access.

ziggy53

cmason wrote:

... but super duper safe as the second hard drive is an exact copy. ...

The company I used to work for had a seperate array for backups, and it had a controller set for "mirror". Everyone was happy with the solution and performance, until they had to try to restore from the array. The controller had failed somehow and, both sides of the mirrored array were useless.

Fortunately, they still had tape backups of the critical files, and that saved their collective bacon.

Moral: Don't trust any single technology for the purpose of backups. Nothing is truly "backed" unless it's on two (or more) technologies and verified as valid and recoverable, preferably on a remote location.

cmason

ziggy53 wrote:

Moral: Don't trust any single technology for the purpose of backups. Nothing is truly "backed" unless it's on two (or more) technologies and verified as valid and recoverable, preferably on a remote location.

quite true, and good point. I normally backup to DVD, storing a copy in my safe at home, and in the file cabinet in the office. Not that the photos are really that dear, but DVDs are cheap. I usually wait till I have 3 or 4 GB, then copy to the DVD. It's a reasonable simple approach, no fancy software needed, and avoids the problem of there being any proprietary formats. (aside from RAW <snicker> )

Stormdancing

While I agree with the need for multiple backups on different types of media, I use this to keep my lifetime of Cd/Dvds. Mine is larger and holds 1,000. I have all my music and everything in there. Right by the door.:D

This is the link for the 500 size.

http://www.cdrdvdrmedia.com/cd-dvd-510-holder-wallet-holders-wallets-ehj510.html

Here's for the 1,000 size.

http://www.cdrdvdrmedia.com/1000-aluminium-cd-case-089.html

Art Scott

BBones wrote:

I am getting a firewire 800 PC Card soon since the new Sandisk Extreme IV's need it. Can you recommend me a good monster HDD and remember that I am definately not made of money (otherwise the 1D mark 2 would be sent in for repairs already and I would have a Mark3 on order )

Either a seagate 500 or 750 gb....I recommend Seagate due to their 5yr warranty....add an external enclousre for less than 50 bucks and your good to go.....if you go with an actual external drive your warranty is only for 1 year, as opposed to 5 years by purchasing an internal and adding the external enclosure.....

BBones

I'll take Art Scott for the win

jdryan3

Art Scott wrote:

Either a seagate 500 or 750 gb....I recommend Seagate due to their 5yr warranty....add an external enclousre for less than 50 bucks and your good to go.....if you go with an actual external drive your warranty is only for 1 year, as opposed to 5 years by purchasing an internal and adding the external enclosure.....

Given the volumes you are talking about, I agree with Art. If you do go with the external drive, Seagate does have a 3 year guarantee.