Extended Camera Warranties

Extended Camera Warranties

RTV offers camera warranties for any camera purchased from Real Tour Vision for only $100. The warranty covers the camera for 3 years and the broken camera will either be repaired or replaced, no questions asked. So what are the pros and cons to getting an extended warranty?

Pros
• The warranty is cheap insurance at only a fraction of the cost of the camera.
• 3 years coverage no questions asked.
• If anything happens to your camera it is fixed or replace for only
hundred dollars instead of paying $400 plus for a new camera.

Cons
• If you don’t use the warranty your out your $100.

If you figure that you spent $400 or more on your camera and would spend about that much to replace the camera if it broke then a $100 warranty is a great deal for 3 years of coverage but how likely is it that you will need to have your camera fixed?

The shutters on a Canon Digital Rebel are rated for 50,000 cycles. This means that you should be able to take 50,000 pictures before you start having problems with the camera. For the standard consumer the average number of pictures taken a year is about 900 photos. At this rate we can see that the shutters on this camera will last the average consumer about 50 years. As Tour Builders we use our cameras much more heavily. It is our livelihood. If you factor that you shoot at least 4 pans (at 12 pictures per pan) and 10 stills per tour you are shooting 58 pictures per tour not including retakes and additional pictures. Now if you shoot only 4 tours per day for 5 days a week you are taking 1160 pictures. This is still not shooting any extra pictures for retakes. Now in 51 weeks, leaving you a week for vacation, you will have taken 59,160 pictures. At the Canon Digital Rebels duty cycle of 50,000 cycles there is a very good chance your camera may last you only a year. The Canon 20D has a duty cycle of 100,000 cycles which allows us a twice as many pictures and at the current rate of use we would reach the rated number of cycles in about a 1 year and 7 months. In light of this information I would recommend the warranty.

I know that this information is only based on the duty cycle of the shutters and there are many other things that can go wrong with a digital camera such as the LCD screen dying, the card slot stops working, etc. What I am trying to get us to think about is the fact that we use cameras at a much higher rate than most cameras are designed to handle. The warranties can help to greatly offset the cost of getting a new camera or getting your current camera fixed, due to the extra wear and tear they get from our high rate of use.

Ben Knorr
Real Tour Vision Lens Engineer
Real Tour Vision
Northern Michigan Virtual Tours

SHARE THIS STORY