Last Updated on 13/08/2022 by Kevin Agar

I’ve tried several different methods of reading the shutter count of a Canon 7DMk2 and have finally hit upon gphoto2, which actually works, plus it’s free.

It’s a command line program that runs under Linux. I do have a laptop running Linux, but for some reason, I couldn’t get it working.

I decided to try running it on my Windows 11 machine running Linux Mint in VirtualBox.

Connected my Canon 7DMk2 to the PC via USB

Start VirtualBox, select Linux Mint, and then select Settings from the top right. In settings select USB and Add USB. The Camera should show up, so add it.

Start up the Linux Mint virtual machine and go to the Start Menu Administration>Software Management and enter Gphoto2 in the Search Box. Click on Gphoto2 and install it.

Open a console window and enter

gphoto2 –auto-detect

kevin@kevin-VirtualBox:~$ gphoto2 –auto-detect

Model Port

Canon EOS 7D MarkII usb:001,003

Enter

gphoto2 –get-config /main/status/shuttercounter

or if you want debug information

gphoto2 –debug –debug-logfile=my-logfile.txt –get-config /main/status/shuttercounter

If it fails with errors

*** Error ***
An error occurred in the io-library (‘Could not claim the USB device’): Could not claim interface 0 (Device or resource busy). Make sure no other program (gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor) or kernel module (such as sdc2xx, stv680, spca50x) is using the device and you have read/write access to the device.

*** Error ***
An error occurred in the io-library (‘Could not claim the USB device’): Could not claim interface 0 (Device or resource busy). Make sure no other program (gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor) or kernel module (such as sdc2xx, stv680, spca50x) is using the device and you have read/write access to the device.
*** Error (-53: ‘Could not claim the USB device’) ***

Then do the following

ps aux | grep gphoto

run kill -9 PID to kill the first two processes

kevin@kevin-VirtualBox:~$ ps aux | grep gphoto
kevin 1486 0.0 0.2 245688 10980 ? Ssl 12:08 0:00 /usr/libexec/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
kevin 2438 0.0 0.3 439988 14300 ? Sl 12:20 0:00 /usr/libexec/gvfsd-gphoto2 –spawner :1.8 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/1
kevin 2461 0.0 0.0 9212 2328 pts/0 S+ 12:21 0:00 grep –color=auto gphoto
kevin@kevin-VirtualBox:~$ kill -9 1486
kevin@kevin-VirtualBox:~$ kill -9 2438
kevin@kevin-VirtualBox:~$ gphoto2 –get-config /main/status/shuttercounter
Label: Shutter Counter
Readonly: 0
Type: TEXT
Current: 121346
END
kevin@kevin-VirtualBox:~$