How many miles?

How many miles? Sorry, I’m not launching in to some philosophical questions about the meaning of life, war and peace with an allusion to the Bob Dylan song.
No I was thinking about the conversation with the car salesman in a garage forecourt but as applied to photo kit in ebay; “How many actuations?” As far as I know there isn’t a menu option on the Nikon camera back to dig out this data, you need to interrogate the depths of the embedded exif data of a raw image file in something like Photoshop.
I have an embarrassing amount of kit accumulated over the last few years; none of which I can bare to part with. After I finished the cad work today I gave myself a fright after delving in recent files from each of the three bodies. (I don’t know, perhaps some of you will laugh at the paltry values listed.)
My first ever DSLR which I thought I would have used the most is at 30 something thousand.
My second 12mp SLR which I still use frequently and I think is amazing; 45,000.
My most recent SLR, a luxury device of over indulgence; 22000.

If you went to work and pushed the shutter button once every ten seconds each day it would take almost seven weeks to achieve this total.
The other aspect to such huge numbers is the storage. Even after allowance for generous deletion of rejects. My external drive is creaking at the seams and every now and then I look at a batch of images from a year ago and brutally filter them down. Not mentioned in the above is my compact which shoots 50mb raw files so if you bracket three that is effectively 150 mb for one image before even creating a jpeg.
I have just read a preview of the new Canon 5D with 50mp sensor. Aside from considerations about current lenses being able to serve such a sensor what size are the files going to be? I suspect PC processing power and storage will all have to be cranked up to cope with the beast.


Anyway, before the desk day started we had a quick walk at Upper Inverroy and I took this 12mp shot of the rusty looking shed in the snow. For what it’s worth I still think Nikon hit a very sweet spot with this era of 35mm sensor.