Does Sony count electronic-shutter frames?

It depends on the body. For the A6700, A7C II, A7CR, ZV-E1, ZV-E10 II, FX2, A1 II and A7 V, ExifTool describes the value as mechanical shutter actuations only. For bodies such as the A7 III, A7 IV and A7R V it is described as total exposures, and on the A7R II it did not increase in Silent Shooting.

Why does my older Sony show a low number?

ExifTool notes that on some older Sony bodies the value wraps at 65,536; it does on the original A7R. After 65,535 frames the count starts again from 0, so a heavily used camera can show a low number.

Do Sony RX and other compact cameras work?

No. ExifTool does not decode a shutter count for Sony DSC compacts such as the RX100 series, and our RX100 VII sample had none.

Why is there no count for my A9 III?

The A9 III has a global electronic shutter and no mechanical shutter. ExifTool 13.59 finds no count in our A9 III sample.

Either, as long as it is the original file from the card. Sony ARW and JPEG files are both verified.

Sony Shutter Count Checker — From an ARW or JPEG

A Sony shutter count sits in an encrypted part of each ARW and JPEG. The reader decodes it with ExifTool 13.59 and tells you whether that body counts every exposure or only mechanical frames. Use an original file from the card. Nothing is uploaded.

GPS in the same photo is a different read. The photo location finder shows coordinates when they are present.

What the Sony number counts

Bodies	What ExifTool says the value is
A6700, A7C II, A7CR, ZV-E1, ZV-E10 II, FX2, A1 II, A7 V	Mechanical shutter actuations only
A1, A7 III, A7 IV, A7C, A7R II to V, A7S II and III, A9, A9 II, A6100 to A6600, ZV-E10, FX3, A99 II	Total exposures (did not increase in Silent Shooting on the A7R II)
Older bodies: A7, A7 II, A7R, A7S, A6000, A5000/5100, NEX, SLT, A68, A77 II	Total exposures; wraps at 65,536 on some models

Search names and the model string in the file

The name in a search box is not the string stored in the photo. A count is shown only when ExifTool’s Model field matches a verified name. The rows map those search names to that string and to the category in the table above. They do not add a shutter count.

Name people type	Model string in the file	Category on this page
a6500	ILCE-6500	Total exposures (A6100 to A6600)
a6100	ILCE-6100	Total exposures (A6100 to A6600)
a6300	ILCE-6300	Total exposures (A6100 to A6600)
a6400	ILCE-6400	Total exposures (A6100 to A6600)
a6600	ILCE-6600	Total exposures (A6100 to A6600)
a6000	ILCE-6000	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a6700	ILCE-6700	Mechanical shutter actuations only
a7iii, a7 iii	ILCE-7M3	Total exposures
a7iv, a7 iv	ILCE-7M4	Total exposures
a7v, a7 v	ILCE-7M5	Mechanical shutter actuations only
a7ii, a7 ii	ILCE-7M2	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a7	ILCE-7	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a7c	ILCE-7C	Total exposures
a7c ii, a7cii	ILCE-7CM2	Mechanical shutter actuations only
a7cr	ILCE-7CR	Mechanical shutter actuations only
a7r	ILCE-7R	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a7r ii	ILCE-7RM2	Total exposures
a7r iii	ILCE-7RM3	Total exposures
a7r iv	ILCE-7RM4	Total exposures
a7r v	ILCE-7RM5	Total exposures
a7s	ILCE-7S	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a7s ii	ILCE-7SM2	Total exposures
a7s iii	ILCE-7SM3	Total exposures
a1	ILCE-1	Total exposures
a1 ii	ILCE-1M2	Mechanical shutter actuations only
a9	ILCE-9	Total exposures
a9 ii	ILCE-9M2	Total exposures
a5000	ILCE-5000	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a5100	ILCE-5100	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a99 ii	ILCA-99M2	Total exposures
a68	ILCA-68	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
a77 ii	ILCA-77M2	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536
zv-e10	ZV-E10	Total exposures
fx3	ILME-FX3	Total exposures
fx2	ILME-FX2	Mechanical shutter actuations only
NEX, SLT	NEX-* and SLT-A* on the verified list	Older bodies; may wrap at 65,536

Sony owners also report counts that look high: on an A7 IV with electronic front curtain off, one owner was told by Sony service that each shot can add more than one actuation. If the number looks odd, compare two photos taken a known number of frames apart.

Verified Sony models (66)

Show the list (model names as the camera writes them)

ILCA-68, ILCA-77M2, ILCA-99M2, ILCE-1, ILCE-1M2, ILCE-7, ILCE-7C, ILCE-7CM2, ILCE-7CR, ILCE-7M2, ILCE-7M3, ILCE-7M4, ILCE-7M5, ILCE-7R, ILCE-7RM2, ILCE-7RM3, ILCE-7RM4, ILCE-7RM5, ILCE-7S, ILCE-7SM2, ILCE-7SM3, ILCE-9, ILCE-9M2, ILCE-3000, ILCE-3500, ILCE-5000, ILCE-5100, ILCE-6000, ILCE-6100, ILCE-6300, ILCE-6400, ILCE-6400A, ILCE-6500, ILCE-6600, ILCE-6700, ILCE-QX1, ILME-FX2, ILME-FX3, ILME-FX30, NEX-3, NEX-3N, NEX-5, NEX-5N, NEX-5T, NEX-6, NEX-7, NEX-C3, NEX-F3, NEX-VG10E, NEX-VG20E, NEX-VG30E, NEX-VG900, SLT-A33, SLT-A35, SLT-A37, SLT-A55, SLT-A55V, SLT-A57, SLT-A58, SLT-A65, SLT-A65V, SLT-A77, SLT-A77V, SLT-A99, SLT-A99V, ZV-E10

The A7 V (ILCE-7M5) shows why this list exists: ExifTool versions before 13.44 decoded its count wrongly (699 instead of 477 on the same sample). The reader uses 13.59.

Where Sony stores the count

Sony hides the count in enciphered maker-note blocks (ExifTool calls them Tag9050 and Tag2010). ExifTool deciphers them, but the position of the count inside the block differs between models and sometimes between firmware versions. That is why a decoder written for one body can return a confident wrong number for the next, and why this page only shows numbers for models we have tested.

Real readings from our test files

These public-domain ARWs were read by the tool on this page and by desktop ExifTool 13.59. Both gave the same numbers.

Test file (CC0, raw.pixls.us)	Model	Reader result
`DSC01542.ARW`	ILCE-6000 (A6000)	2,687
`DSC00002.ARW`	ILCE-6700 (A6700)	3
`DSC00799.ARW`	ILCE-7CR (A7CR)	816
`_DSC0009.ARW`	ILCE-7M3 (A7 III)	10
`ILCE-7M4_DSC06681_APS-C-Raw-Compressed.ARW`	ILCE-7M4 (A7 IV)	16,911
`7RM5-S35-LossyCompressed.ARW`	ILCE-7RM5 (A7R V)	453

The A6000 file is named DSC01542 but reads 2,687: the file number resets with the folder, the shutter count does not.

Check it on a computer instead

With ExifTool installed: exiftool -ShutterCount DSC00001.ARW. Use version 13.44 or newer for the A7 V; 13.59 is what this page runs.

How we verified Sony

72 Sony sample files from 66 models (JPEG and ARW) were read in the browser engine and with native ExifTool 13.59; every number matched. Sony’s A-mount DSLRs (DSLR-A models) are left out: ExifTool documents their count tags as “only valid for some DSLR models”.

Other bodies are listed on the camera shutter count checker.

Other brands

Related tools

View image metadata online lists GPS, camera, XMP and C2PA data in a photo.
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Remove EXIF and GPS from a JPEG, PNG or WebP.

The reader runs ExifTool 13.59 by Phil Harvey (same terms as Perl: Artistic License or GPL) on zeroperl 1.0.10 (Apache-2.0), a WebAssembly build of Perl. Notices.

Sony shutter count checker