Straight answer: the K100D Super writes its actuation total into every PEF file, and the parser on this site reads it in your browser — the file stays on your machine. The value sits in MakerNote tag 0x005D, XOR-scrambled with the camera’s own date and time, which is why the original file off the card matters and a re-saved copy can lie. Below: where the number lives, how to read it two ways, what has and has not been validated on this body, and what a count is actually worth on a nineteen-year-old camera.
Pentax announced the K100D Super in June 2007 as a mid-cycle revision of the K100D, and it turned out to be the last of the 6-megapixel K-mount bodies before the 10-megapixel K200D took over the entry slot in 2008. It is the same camera as the K100D in the ways that matter to a shutter count — same body, same focal-plane shutter, same metadata scheme — with three additions: a Dust Removal system, support for SDM (Supersonic Drive Motor) lenses, and an ISO 3200 setting.
One detail is worth correcting because it is widely muddled, including elsewhere on this site: the Super did not introduce Shake Reduction. The original K100D of 2006 was Pentax’s first DSLR with in-body sensor-shift SR, and the K110D was the cheaper variant that shipped without it. What the Super did was put the SR unit to a second job — its dust removal shakes the sensor assembly at high frequency, alongside a fluorine coating on the low-pass filter, so on this body SR and dust removal share one mechanism.
| Specification | Pentax K100D Super |
|---|---|
| Announced | June 2007 |
| Sensor | 6.1 MP APS-C CCD |
| Mount | Pentax KAF2 K-mount, incl. SDM lens support |
| Stabilisation | Shake Reduction (SR), sensor-shift — also on the K100D, absent on the K110D |
| Added over the K100D | Dust Removal (SR-unit shake + fluorine-coated low-pass filter), SDM support, ISO 3200 |
| Viewfinder | Optical pentamirror |
| Live view | None |
| Video | None |
| Autofocus | SAFOX VIII, 11 points |
| Sensitivity | ISO 200–3200 |
| Shutter | Focal-plane, 30 s – 1/4000 s |
| Power | 4× AA, or 2× CR-V3 — no proprietary battery pack |
| RAW format | PEF — carries the shutter count; no in-camera DNG on this body |
| Shutter durability | No figure published by Pentax — commonly estimated at ~100,000 (est.) |
| Browser tool support | ✓ Model, EXIF and actuation count, from a PEF |
Pentax has used one scheme for this since roughly 2006, and it is unusually generous: the counter is a first-class MakerNote entry rather than a byte offset buried in a binary blob, so it survives in ordinary PEF files and in camera JPEGs. ExifTool’s Pentax module states the coverage plainly — tag 0x005D is “used by all Pentax DSLR’s except *istD and *istDS until firmware 2.0”. The K100D Super is inside that range, and ExifTool even carries its own model ID for the body (0x12ba2), so files are attributed to the Super rather than lumped in with the K100D.
The one twist is that the four bytes are scrambled. The stored value is a big-endian 32-bit integer XOR-ed with the camera’s own Date (0x0006) and Time (0x0007) MakerNote tags:
That is not encryption in any protective sense — it is reversible arithmetic, and both ExifTool and the parser on this site undo it. But it has a practical consequence that matters more on this camera than on most: the count cannot be recovered without the Date and Time tags from the same MakerNote. Strip the MakerNote and there is no number. Rewrite the timestamps and the arithmetic produces a plausible-looking but wrong number.
.PEF straight off the card.
ExifTool’s note on the tag carries two warnings: the value may be reset by servicing, and it does not include actuations from live view or video recording. On the K100D Super the second warning is harmless — the body has neither live view nor video, so there is no category of hidden actuation for it to miss. Every exposure this camera ever made moved the blades, which makes its count a more honest wear proxy than the same number off a modern mirrorless body, where many frames never touched a mechanical shutter. The counter does include releases that produced no saved image, such as a manual white-balance frame.
The servicing warning is the real caveat, and there is a second one worth knowing: ExifTool records that the first frame from a brand-new K10D of this generation read 81, 181, 246 or 209 depending on the copy, because the factory fires test frames. A body of this era reading a few hundred is normal for barely-used. A 2007 camera reading 0 or 1 is not “mint” — it points at a replaced or reset shutter unit, and that is a question to ask rather than a bargain.
.PEF file off the card unedited.Pentax MakerNote 0x005D (XOR Date/Time decrypt).ExifTool is the free, open-source metadata reader that defined this decryption; it runs locally and changes nothing in the file.
To confirm the value really came from the Pentax MakerNote rather than anywhere else, ask for the group names:
If the command prints nothing, the MakerNote or its Date/Time tags are gone from that file — go back to an original. The same applies to a camera JPEG: the K100D Super writes the same MakerNote into JPEGs, so a straight-out-of-camera JPEG works too, but it is the first thing an editing round-trip destroys.
Pentax published no shutter durability figure for the K100D Super, and none for the K100D or K110D either. The ~100,000 number attached to these bodies across the web is an estimate based on what entry-level DSLRs of the period were generally understood to manage — not a specification you can hold Pentax to. The table below is a yardstick against an estimate, not a countdown against a warranty.
| Actuation count | Share of the ~100,000 estimate | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| 0 – 10,000 | 0 – 10 % | Very low use — typical of a hobbyist body |
| 10,000 – 40,000 | 10 – 40 % | Low to moderate use |
| 40,000 – 75,000 | 40 – 75 % | Moderate to heavy for this class |
| 75,000 + | 75 %+ | Heavy — price it as a body that may need the shutter unit |
On a camera this old the count is rarely the deciding factor, and on this one there is a specific reason to look elsewhere first. The K100D Super runs on 4× AA cells or 2× CR-V3, which is a genuine advantage nineteen years on — there is no proprietary pack to have died of old age, unlike the D-LI50 siblings. The flip side is that leaked alkaline cells are the classic way these bodies die: check the battery compartment and its contacts for white crust, green corrosion or pitting, and treat any of it as a serious fault rather than cosmetic.
The other age-related checks, in rough order of how often they turn up: grip rubber going sticky or lifting at the edges; dust settled on the low-pass filter (the Dust Removal system helps but its adhesive strip does eventually saturate); haze or fungus in the pentamirror and viewfinder optics; and an SR unit that rattles or buzzes — and because dust removal is driven by the same unit, an SR failure takes dust removal with it. There is no weather sealing on this body, so inspect the mount and port covers if it lived outdoors.
These three are the same platform, and for shutter-count purposes they behave identically: tag 0x005D, the same XOR of Date and Time, readable from PEF or a camera JPEG, in the browser or with ExifTool. Verifying that against the parser here, a planted count of 31,337 came back exactly for K100D Super, K100D, K110D and K10D model strings alike. What differs between them is everything except the counter.
| Body | Year | Shake Reduction | Notable | Count via 0x005D |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pentax K110D | 2006 | No | The K100D without stabilisation | ✓ Yes |
| Pentax K100D | 2006 | Yes | First Pentax DSLR with in-body SR | ✓ Yes |
| Pentax K100D Super | 2007 | Yes | Adds Dust Removal, SDM support, ISO 3200 | ✓ Yes |
| Pentax K200D (successor) | 2008 | Yes | 10.2 MP, sealed body, also AA-powered | ✓ Yes |
Because sellers use these names loosely — “K100D” is often shorthand for whichever of the three is in the box — the model string in the file is the cheap way to settle it. The camera writes PENTAX K100D Super, PENTAX K100D or PENTAX K110D, and the tool reports that string next to the count, so one sample file confirms both which body you are being sold and how hard it has worked.
Yes. Drop an original .PEF onto shuttercount.app and the count comes back with the model and capture date; the file is parsed in the page and never uploaded. Use the file as the camera wrote it — the value is scrambled with the MakerNote Date and Time tags, so an edited copy can decode wrongly and a stripped one returns nothing.
Nothing published. Pentax quoted no shutter durability figure for this body, so the ~100,000 in circulation is an estimate from the class norm of the period, flagged as an estimate here for that reason. Any page giving you an exact rated figure for a K100D Super is presenting a guess as a specification.
No. This body gives its owner no actuation readout — the number lives in the file metadata, and a service centre can read the internal counter directly. If a seller offers to show you a count on the camera’s own screen, they are describing a different camera.
No. The counter lives in the body and formatting cannot touch it. What resets is DCF file numbering — which is exactly why IMGP0042.PEF tells you nothing about wear. File numbers are the single most common thing mistaken for a shutter count.
No. Tag 0x005D counts shutter releases, including ones that saved no image such as a manual white-balance frame. Running dust removal shakes the sensor assembly without firing the shutter, so it does not add to the count — and with no live view or video on this body, there is no path by which frames escape the counter either.
As a cheap way into K-mount glass with in-body stabilisation, and for the look of a 6-megapixel CCD at base ISO, it is a functional camera and the AA power is genuinely convenient. Be clear about the limits: 6 megapixels, ISO 3200 that is a marketing number rather than a usable setting, no live view, no video, no sealing. A K-5 or K-r costs little more used and is a substantially better camera — the case for a Super is price, batteries and curiosity, not performance.
Announcement and what the Super added over the K100D — Dust Removal, SDM lens support, ISO 3200: DPReview’s K100D Super announcement and specification sheet, the Imaging Resource specifications, the ePHOTOzine review and the PentaxForums camera entry. That in-body Shake Reduction was introduced on the K100D itself and omitted from the K110D, not added by the Super: the K100D and K110D launch coverage on DPReview. Sources disagree on the original K100D’s top sensitivity, so no maximum ISO is claimed for it here; only the Super’s ISO 200–3200 range is stated. Location and behaviour of the shutter-count field — MakerNote tag 0x005D, the big-endian four-byte value, the XOR of the Date (0x0006) and Time (0x0007) tags, the model coverage note (“all Pentax DSLR’s except *istD and *istDS until firmware 2.0”), the K100D Super model ID 0x12ba2, the reset-by-servicing and live-view warnings, and the factory-test starting values observed on new bodies: ExifTool’s Pentax module, Pentax.pm (tag definition and CryptShutterCount), and the published Pentax tag names. Which formats and bodies this site’s parser decodes, and the “not yet validated on a full release corpus” caveat quoted above: the support matrix on the ShutterCount home page. The planted-count, missing-key and altered-timestamp results described on this page were produced by running this site’s own parser against synthetic PEF structures; no manufacturer shutter-durability figure exists for this body, which is why the ~100,000 here is labelled an estimate.