How reliable is your camera.

Further to the thread on what cameras you have owned, I wonder what your experiences have been with respect to reliability.

In my experience, the cameras that lasted the course were all pre digital. The modern digital models seem to have a working life of a couple of years or so, and strangely it does not seem useage dependent. It is almost as though the electronics are designed to degrade over time.

Does anybody know of a site that has any reliability evidence? Which makes last longest before they break down? Are any particular models regarded as dogs?

Graham

I've never had a digital camera die on me through age (touch wood). My original Pentax EL100 died because I dropped it, but that is forgiveable.

In fact come to think of it more or less every camera I've owned still works. I had an old Hanimex compact which started scratching films but thats it. I must be light on equipment

Both my *ist D bodies have done 50,000 images or so and work just fine. How many film bodies see this much use?

I expect the mirror will go before the electronics.

G

My *ist-D has been through a mere 15000 images, but has been lugged around all over the place (gigs and all). Looks very well used, but still works just fine

My MZ-5 never saw that much use... and had film transport problems in its life, then died. The Z1 I had was a dream - but even that suffered from a fragile battery compartment cover!

Matt

The Super-A I bought from new in 1983/4 eventually was sold for spares or repair when the shutter release failed to work intermittently . . . after 20 years of service. I'd call that reasonably reliable.

It did suffer an early life failure which was repaired under warranty.

I don't expect my Pentax digitals to last that long unless the 10.2Mp milestone remains for a long period of time, which it won't. So my digital bodies will be replaced long before they get worn out.

So before it failed, it worked intermittently? Or maybe that's the definition of a shutter, something that is only open intermittently!

That is very reassuring. I must admit that my own experience was 3 failures with 3 Minolta cameras - two of them not long after the warranty expired. Minolta replaced them after much protest, but that's not the point.
Graham

If anything, I would expect the mechanisms of DSLRs to be designed to take more use than their film counterparts, because now we can shoot hundreds of pictures for free whereas with film the cost issues kept the number of frames down.

The only real camera failures I have experienced are with the electronics of ME series cameras, including the LX. It seems that electronics have become more reliable, and the mechanical parts to a camera are pretty well worked out design-wise.

Our MV has been repaired twice in 25 years, and that is the worst performer so far. Actually, that's not too bad really....

Check out EU directive 1999/44/EC here to see that, in the UK, you can expect a repair or replacement anything up to 6 years from the purchase date if the purchased product could reasonably have been expected to last that long and the fault can be proved to have been there at the time of sale. The last bit might be difficult in some cases.

Hmmmm... One of my MZ-S's had a hell of a time, went back to Pentax at least twice if not 3 times with very noisy wind mech problems. They gave me a new one in the end...

Had issues with Z1-P pop-up flash not working, an LX needing a new circuit board and I can recall in my teens going to Slough to pick up my Dad's Program A which developed shutter problems.

I also had the shutter on my Mamiya 645 1000s get stuck closed around 2-3 years ago - not bad for a camera that's older than I am!!!