Actuations - what is TOO old?

[Glaesemann]

Greetings all,
I have been searching for a H3DII-22. Is there a number of actuations at which one should simply not consider a body, lens or digital back? Assume the items are in good working order and the use is for fine art photography, not time-sensative commercial work. Private discussions have produced a variety of opinions. Curious what you all think.
Best,
Tim G

[hvk]

I think all we can provide is anecdotes. My own experience is a H2F/CFH-22 that I recently sold at ~140k exposures. I bought it with 80k exposures and it worked without problems except for a sensor recalibration (known issue when I purchased the camera). I also used to own a HC 50-110 that had no issues at ~80k exposures.

In my experience a high number of actuations is not a problem. Problems are usually due to environmental conditions, accidents or to electronic meltdowns that can happen at any number of actuations.

/Henrik

[meshuggener]

+1 HVK
some Hasselblad users had their lens down at 2k actuations but I think it's quite rare. My equipement has about 40K actuations for the body and 3k to 55k for the lenses and all is fine. You have to change batteries sometimes.

[jerome_m]

I think all we can provide is anecdotes.

Well... there is this document from Hasselblad, which says lens shutter units are specified at 100K exposures: http://www.hasselblad.de/media/1664043/shutterathighspeed.pdf

For the body shutter, I seem to recall a spec of 50K, but I am not sure. This being said, replacing a body or lens shutter is not a big issue and costs are published here: http://www.hasselblad.com/service--support/service/cost-estimates-and-fixed-service-prices.aspx. Basically, shutters are considered expendable and people using these cameras professionally are replacing them regularly.

The counters are reset by Hasselblad when a shutter is exchanged, BTW. As a consequence, there is no way to know how many actuations a camera really has. A camera with 300 actuations may actually have had its shutter replaced a few times...