I occasionally see bodies for sale with notes regarding the number of frames that body has taken. I was wondering if there is a rule of thumb regarding camera life in terms of number of frames.
Depends on the camera: consumer dslr (D40, D50, D70, D80) expected shutter life is 50,000, the D200 100,000, and the D2 series is 150,000. You could get more or less, these are just the expected or tested to numbers. But pretty good to figure the life left in a used body.
Although it certainly has some bearing, I'm not sure that shutter count is a significant indication of the life left in the body. My original d70 went over 50k before developing some kind of electrical issue, probably something similar to what was termed the BGLOD, on the original d70 series. Before that happened, the shutter and aperture were working fine and still do, when I can get it to work. My guess is that under normal use, with decent care, a body should last quite a while. Keeping in mind that these things are now very complex consumer electronics, with lots of electrical and mechanical parts that can fail, especially with hard use. My d70s is almost 2 years old with about 10k clicks and still running like new. My original d200 is 16 months old, approaching 20k clicks, with no problems.
I bought a used D70 with 15,000 clicks on it. I've put another 5 or 6K on it and it's still ticking along fine.
IT also doesn't necessarily "die" My D50 which recently gave me issues (enough that I sent it in) Was at 24,000 pics in 11 months since purchased (New) BUT I take it to extremely dusty conditions which i'm sure contributed to its problems (Auto ISO is sometimes terribly inaccurate when metering, Shutter might possibly have been sticking (hard to tell I got a few extremely overexposed pics and a few extremely underexposed ones) Then I got an F - - error (Connection problem) with a Lens thats absolutely fine, and had been working and taking pics about 20 seconds before (resetting the camera didn't fix it for that lens) Also the jog dial wasn't always registering So I don't think its really a shutter actuation issue, I think mostly the dust got to it, But as far as my warranty is concerned There never was any "dangerous" situations! And so its not like the shutter failed, in fact it could be perfectly fine, and my meter could be messed! I don't know. So for the OP, its not the end of the camera, since after the fix it will work fine for a while, but for how long is anyones guess. I figure at least 3 years, but with less use, probably more like 5 or 6.
