Questions

Yes. There is no account, subscription, payment or trial. The tool runs in your browser, so it costs us very little to offer.

No. You need Chrome or Microsoft Edge on a computer, a USB cable that carries data, and the camera. The camera driver (the open-source libgphoto2 library, compiled to WebAssembly) downloads into the browser tab when you connect, about 0.6 MB compressed.

Browsers built on Chromium that support WebUSB, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on macOS, Windows, Linux and ChromeOS. Firefox and Safari don’t support WebUSB, and nothing on iPhone or iPad can connect to a camera this way. Chrome on Android supports WebUSB with a USB-OTG adapter, but we haven’t tested it.

We list every camera we have tested, feature by feature, on the supported cameras page. Our first test camera is the Canon EOS 60D. Other cameras that connect over PTP (most Canon EOS bodies, and many others) can be tried; “not yet verified” doesn’t mean it won’t work. Not every camera reports a shutter count over USB, and we never assume support just because a camera is recognised.

Possibly, with effort. Windows normally attaches its own driver to cameras, which stops browsers from reaching them. The usual workaround is to replace that driver with WinUSB using a tool such as Zadig, which changes how Windows sees your camera until you undo it. We haven’t tested Windows yet, so we don’t recommend this for a one-off check.

Usually, once your user is allowed to access the camera over USB (a udev rule) and desktop services like gvfs aren’t holding it open. We haven’t tested Linux yet.

No. The tool only reads. It doesn’t change settings, take photos, or write or delete files. While the connection is open the camera may show that it is connected to a computer, for example by turning its screen off. That ends when you disconnect.

Switch the camera on, use a cable you know carries data (many cables only charge), and plug it directly into the computer. If the camera has a USB mode setting, choose PTP or “PC connection” instead of mass storage. On Windows, see the driver note above.

Another program opened the camera first. Quit Photos, Image Capture, Preview, EOS Utility, Lightroom, Capture One and any automatic photo importer, then unplug the camera, wait a few seconds and plug it in again. On a Mac, restarting releases the background camera service if nothing else works; advanced users sometimes run killall -9 ptpcamerad in Terminal just before connecting. Close other tabs that might be connected to the camera too.

Cameras switch off or sleep to save battery, and a connection that was cut off (for example by closing the tab mid-read) can leave a camera waiting. The tool tries to clear that automatically each time you connect. If it still doesn’t answer, switch the camera off, wait a few seconds, switch it on again, then reload the page and connect.

USB access can only start from a click. If it’s still refused, check the site settings next to the address bar. On a managed work or school computer, your administrator may have disabled USB access for browsers.

The driver is downloaded when you connect. A flaky connection or an extension that blocks scripts or WebAssembly can stop it. Reload the page, or try with extensions disabled.

Some cameras only refresh the counter they report over USB when they are switched on. On our EOS 60D, switching off and on, then reconnecting, brings it up to date. Read the full explanation in why a shutter count doesn’t change.

CamInfoLab shows exactly what the camera reports and never estimates or fills in a value. If the camera reports something that isn’t a whole number, you’ll see that instead of a count. Whether the camera’s own counter is right is up to its firmware, and the count can be reset when a shutter is replaced.

Yes. A brand-new or freshly reset camera can genuinely report 0, and we show it. If the camera doesn’t report a counter at all, we say so; we never show a missing value as 0.

There’s no universal answer. Compare it with the manufacturer’s published shutter durability rating for the model, the camera’s age and the seller’s description, but remember that ratings are averages, not a countdown. See what a shutter count does and doesn’t tell you.

Most Canon EOS cameras don’t write the shutter count into the files they save. Some other brands do, but a photo can be edited, so a reading taken directly from the camera is more trustworthy. File names like IMG_1234.JPG are not shutter counts.

Not unless you choose to. The camera connection, the reading and the result stay in your browser. After a reading you can tap Share result to send the camera’s model, firmware and whether it worked, which helps us grow the camera list. It never includes the count, serial number, photos or anything about you, and you can see exactly what’s sent before you tap. Read the privacy notice.

Browsers only let a website talk to a USB device after you choose it in the browser’s own chooser. That’s a safety feature: the site can’t see or use other devices on your computer.

The quickest way is to try it and tap Share result (or Share report if it didn’t connect). Shared results appear on the tested cameras page straight away as “user tested”, until we test the model ourselves. For anything else, use the camera report form and leave out the serial number.

We build small tools one at a time, and only when we can make them reliable. We are exploring a sensor dust check, a hot-pixel check and a used-camera inspection checklist. None of them is available yet. If one would help you, tell us how you’d use it.