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Comment by yakubin | Hacker News Reader

Every photo taken shortens the life of a sensor.

To add to this, with those particular cameras(it’s the frame I shoot on), you’re encouraged by the form factor and ergonomics to turn them off when idle to get the most out of the smallish battery, they boot in like 1s. A battery is good for ~350 shutter pulls, I don’t want to use one of those every time I think about taking a picture.

Also, a dead pixel is not a ruined photo, it’s a minor inconvenience in editing at worst. And every photo I take on a FF is getting edited, the gorgeous RAW output is what I’m there for.

> minor inconvenience

Do you have software that automatically fixes this issue in all the pictures at once? Because as a non-professional I can only think of a very manual approach.

On my old phone, dust made its way into one of the cameras and now all of those photos are forever ruined (or until I find a way to somewhat automate this fixing)

Any real photo editor will allow you to batch a patch heal operations. Lightroom, Photoshop, GIMP, Darktable, etc... all support this.

That's not really true, it's only a problem for the shutter. The sensor doesn't really break.

You’re right. I misremembered. The term is “shutter life”. Same result though.

Not the same result: we're talking about taking a picture without opening the shutter.

Given that shutter sounds are produced, I'd guess the shutter is opened[1]:

> During this time, shutter sounds will be produced.

[1]: <https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/2010/v1/en/contents/TP0003229...>

The shutter is actually being closed. On mirrorless cameras the shutter is by default open so that viewfinder framing can be accomplished, then it quickly closes, opens for the photo, and ends closed before opening again to act as a viewfinder.

In the case of a reference photo it is closing, not opening, taking a read of the sensor, then opening again.

Do mirrorless cameras even have physical shutters? Or is it all digital?

Most do. Some, like Nikon Z8 and Z9, don't.

Older ones do, because the readout speed of sensors was not fast enough. Cameras with stacked or global shutters generally don't, because it's no longer an advantage. In between, it's a choice you can make whether or not to use the shutter.

Yeah, but that’s like saying your mechanic shouldn’t take test drives because every mile driven shortens the life of the car.

The shutter, which is replaceable, is normally rated, for 200k-1mm actuations MTBF.

Even taking a reference photo every day won’t truly impact shutter life.

Anecdotally: I have a 20 year old Canon 1D that is 50% over it’s rated shutter life, and that camera was used for photojournalism (used HARD) for most of its life.

Most (all?) mirrorless cameras these days have an electronic shutter too, so it's not like it would put any extra miles on the mechanical shutter.

You need to have perfect dark to take the reference image, so even on the mirrorless ones you end up having to close the mechanical shutter to get it done.

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