The 100,000 barrier

It surely can't happen very often - in amateur circumstances - taking more than 100,000 shots with a camera. The average amateur photographer has to own (and use) a camera for a very long time indeed to reach such a total. In practice, many amateurs (if they can afford it) are chasing the latest and best, and never do much with old equipment except put it away, or sell it on, or junk it. 

But I've now got to that magic 100,000 shot total with my little Leica D-Lux 4 of June 2009 vintage. 

Well - to be strictly precise - the camera's internal shot counter has registered over 100,000 shots - 100,002 to be precise. But the actual number of pictures taken is still only 96,572 (I have always kept a spreadsheet to account for the difference). Ninety-six thousand is still a considerable figure itself, of course; but it will be a long time yet before there truly are 100,000 shutter-actuations, as nearly all my photography is currently done with LXV, my newer and more capable Leica X Vario. (And occasionally with my phone) 

The little Leica is - at long last - semi-retired, with only standby duties. It will come with me to Scotland shortly, as a necessary backup camera, but I doubt whether it will be called upon. LXV has eclipsed it almost entirely, except for macro work. But there won't be much of that. I shall be much more interested in capturing scenery - the sort that makes you go wow - possibly scooping the final falling of the Old Man of Hoy, plunging into the sea just as the ferry boat passes (what a shot that will make!). If I'm lucky, the Northern Lights. Certainly some amazing sunsets. And all the day-to-day sights - including people - that I'll encounter as I drive or walk about.  

The real point of this post is not so much to celebrate a big milestone passed, but to relate what happened when the little Leica's shot counter reached this extraordinary total of 100,000 shots. The manual was silent on what to expect. Perhaps they (the nibelungs who beaver away at Leica HQ at Wetzlar) never imagined that anyone would use a D-Lux 4 so much, and consequently thought it superfluous to give advice - or a warning - in the manual. 

So the little Leica's fate remained unclear. I wondered whether it would simply stop functioning when 100,000 shots had been taken - the primitive electronics would register the total, go automatically into Termination Mode, and then switch off beyond any revival. Or perhaps the camera would warm up with a bleeping noise and explode, in some kind of heat death. Alternatively, since some cameras have a soul, there would be a long, soft sigh, and a camera-shaped wraith would emerge from the front of the lens, shimmer briefly in farewell, then fade into nothingness, on its way to a place that you and I can know nothing of. Or maybe the little Leica would physically transform into a butterfly, and flutter out into the garden, then on to far horizons. Who could say. Any of these endings could happen.

There was also, of course, the bare possibility that the camera would carry on quite normally. Having already created 99 internal photo folders, one after another over the years, it would now create its 100th folder and continue indefinitely.

This is the little Leica D-Lux 4 in person. 

It's quite small. Here it is next to my phone, and the lens cap of the Leica X-U I owned for a few months.

Although obviously durable, it isn't built to traditional Leica standards. The little Leica has always been vulnerable to accidental damage. It certainly hasn't got the bulletproof build that my considerably-larger Leica X-U - named Lili - had. This was the two of them next to each other a year ago.

Even so, its very smallness has made the little Leica easy to protect from harm. I have long developed a warm affection for this most faithful device, my companion on so many adventures. I'd be sad if it died simply because (like some cheap washing machine) it had an in-built operational life that couldn't be extended.  

Well, the 99,999th shot finally arrived. I used LXV to photo the playback screen.

The screen graphics look Stone-Age! The shot counter shows the total in two parts, separated by a hyphen. '199' means 'folder 99'. The very first folder automatically created by the camera was numbered '100', then there was '101', '102' and so on. Each folder could contain 999 pictures, starting with picture '0001' and on to '0999', as here. Thus, folder 99 with 999 pictures in it. So what would happen if I took one more shot?

I set up a selfie. Make or break.

Aha! No electronic termination, no heat death, no departing soul, nor any miraculous transformation into a butterfly. The little Leica had simply created a new folder - '200', meaning really '100', and had numbered my selfie as file '0001' within it. 

I linked camera and laptop and examined folders '199' and '200'.

Well, I was relieved that the little Leica was still alive and kicking! But faintly disappointed that the 100,000-shot point had passed with no drama whatever. How perverse of me!

These folders have now been emptied by copying the pictures to the laptop, and deleting all pictures left on the camera. Which automatically gets rid of folder '199' and leaves only '200'. As I said, the total of pictures actually taken is really only 96,572. Another 3,428 to take before I can truly say that 100,000 shots have been taken with this camera. Unless something awful befalls LXV, it could take five more years to accomplish that.