Do camera sensors deteriorate with use or time?

[Guillermo Luijk]

Does anyone know if camera sensors deteriorate with time or use like other electronic devices? is there some quality evolution against time or use for image digital sensors? could ETTR and HDR multiexposure deteriorate more quickly the sensor due to severe saturation? if so, how many shots should be acceptable to start noticing a quality loss on the sensor?

I have never read about any of these question, but they could be important specially if considering the purchase of second hand stuff.

Regards

[Tony Beach]

I wouldn't sweat it.  The total time exposed to UV rays (and those rays are filtered by lenses and the filter in front of the sensor) is minuscule.  Take a typical exposure of 1/250s, that's 250 shots to equal one second or about 6 hours and 40 minutes of total exposure time after 100,000 actuations.  Furthermore, the lens is diffracting significant amounts of light as well (after all, longer exposures are done at smaller apertures).   Add to that (or subtract from that, if you will) the fact that people infrequently have direct sunlight  hitting their sensors and we are truly discussing something that is dwarfed by other considerations (such as the effect of time and exposure to excessive heat or cold).

[DarkPenguin]

I always thought you got more and more hot, stuck and dead pixels over time.  Presumably that adds up.

I'm more concerned with the effect of live view on sensor life.