Slow response - Question on Cannon A450

Hi,

I am not sure what in my settings changed but whenever I take a picture
now, the amount of time my Cannon power Shot A540 takes to "record" the
pictre seems to be much longer (it takes a few seconds) than usual and
it feels like I am waiting for eternity. I have my settings at either
portrait or auto and at postcard w/ date. Sometimes, I get a little
blinking red camera symbol on the right hand corner of the screen.

I am traveling and forgot to bring my manual with me - can anyone
please help me?
My memory card is a 1GB card with only a handful pof pictures as of now
and I changed the batteries to brand new ones. I have been using the
camera for a few months now and it is the first time this is happening
to me.

Any help will be appreciated. Please walk me through the steps if you
think I need to change my shutter speed or focal length.
PS: If there is a different groups I need to post this message at,
please do let me know

thanks,
GPN

GPN wrote:
Hi,

I am not sure what in my settings changed but whenever I take a
picture now, the amount of time my Cannon power Shot A540 takes to
"record" the pictre seems to be much longer (it takes a few seconds)
than usual and it feels like I am waiting for eternity. I have my
settings at either portrait or auto and at postcard w/ date.
Sometimes, I get a little blinking red camera symbol on the right
hand corner of the screen.

I am traveling and forgot to bring my manual with me - can anyone
please help me?
My memory card is a 1GB card with only a handful pof pictures as of
now and I changed the batteries to brand new ones. I have been using
the camera for a few months now and it is the first time this is
happening to me.

Any help will be appreciated. Please walk me through the steps if you
think I need to change my shutter speed or focal length.
PS: If there is a different groups I need to post this message at,
please do let me know

thanks,
GPN

Have you reformatted your card recently? -Or are you simply deleting the
files from it.
If you haven't formatted for a while, that would be my first suggestion. If
you don't format, little bits and pieces of files can end up scattered all
over the place, and it takes more time...

Other than that... Is it possible that you were formerly shooting in a
lower resolution setting, and are now saving to a higher resolution (with
much larger file sizes)? -Something to check...

Mark²

--
Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at:
www.pbase.com/markuson

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your reply. I had deleted all the pictures and there were
quite a few - Now based on your response, I reformatted the card and
turned the camera off and turned it back on again. Does not make much
of a difference.

Then I tried moving around to a different mode - it appears that the
resolution may make a slight difference. I basically tried to click a
pic or two indoors by keeping the mode in "landscape" next to the
"portait" . It appears the "landscape" mode takes much shorter than the
"portrait" mode (both adjusted using the small wheel next to the zoom
and power button). I am expecting to take a bunch of pictures of people
at short distance and it appears that for that purpose, the camera is
going to have a slow response..

Any other ideas will be much appreciated. thanks,

gpn


On Jan 27, 7:15 am, "Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even number
wrote:
GPN wrote:
Hi,

I am not sure what in my settings changed but whenever I take a
picture now, the amount of time my Cannon power Shot A540 takes to
"record" the pictre seems to be much longer (it takes a few seconds)
than usual and it feels like I am waiting for eternity. I have my
settings at either portrait or auto and at postcard w/ date.
Sometimes, I get a little blinking red camera symbol on the right
hand corner of the screen.

I am traveling and forgot to bring my manual with me - can anyone
please help me?
My memory card is a 1GB card with only a handful pof pictures as of
now and I changed the batteries to brand new ones. I have been using
the camera for a few months now and it is the first time this is
happening to me.

Any help will be appreciated. Please walk me through the steps if you
think I need to change my shutter speed or focal length.
PS: If there is a different groups I need to post this message at,
please do let me know

thanks,
GPNHave you reformatted your card recently? -Or are you simply deleting the
files from it.
If you haven't formatted for a while, that would be my first suggestion. If
you don't format, little bits and pieces of files can end up scattered all
over the place, and it takes more time...

Other than that... Is it possible that you were formerly shooting in a
lower resolution setting, and are now saving to a higher resolution (with
much larger file sizes)? -Something to check...

Mark²

--
Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at:
www.pbase.com/markuson- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -

On 26 Jan 2007 22:51:32 -0800, GPN wrote:

Then I tried moving around to a different mode - it appears that the
resolution may make a slight difference. I basically tried to click a
pic or two indoors by keeping the mode in "landscape" next to the
"portait" . It appears the "landscape" mode takes much shorter than the
"portrait" mode (both adjusted using the small wheel next to the zoom
and power button). I am expecting to take a bunch of pictures of people
at short distance and it appears that for that purpose, the camera is
going to have a slow response..

It sounds as if the excessive time is caused by the camera trying
to autofocus. In Landscape Mode it may be quicker because the
camera is probably trying to use the smallest possible aperture.
The manual for some of Canon's other cameras warn that the use of
Landscape Mode might make it desirable to use a tripod, because the
camera might use a very slow shutter speed, causing excessive camera
shake for handheld shots. But by using a small aperture, the camera
will have a very large Depth of Field, and so the camera may not
have to waste time focusing if it can quickly focus the camera to a
predefined distance that will almost certainly be within the Depth
of Field. If you aren't familiar with this term (DOF), the smaller
the aperture, the greater the DOF. Just inventing an imaginary case
which is only intended to be illustrative and not particularly
accurate, if the camera is focused at 25 feet, the DOF might
guarantee that everything from 10 feet to infinity is in relatively
sharp focus, so there's no need to try to have the camera focus
directly on one particular object.

Canon's manuals describe Portrait Mode as one where the camera
tries to emphasize the person by blurring the background. This uses
settings diametrically opposed to Landscape Mode. The lens uses the
largest possible aperture to minimize the DOF. This makes accurate
focusing very important, so the camera will try to get an accurate
focus and might take some time to do so. Some things cause focusing
to take more time. The main one is not having sufficient light.
You said that your pictures were taken indoors, so try taking
similar shots out in the brighter daylight to see if focusing speeds
up. Also, Canon's manuals usually describe the types of subjects
that are harder for the camera to focus on. These will cause
focusing to take more time. The manual for the A530/A540 describes
some of these, and they're probably the same for your A450:

Subjects with extremely low contrast to the surroundings
Scenes with a mixture of near and far subjects
Subjects with extremely bright objects at the center of the composition
Subjects that are moving quickly
Subjects through glass

The manual for my Fuji S5100 adds some more which may also make
focusing difficult for your A450:

Very shiny subjects such as a mirror or car body
Subjects that do not reflect well, such as hair or fur
Subjects with no substance, such as smoke or flames
Dark subjects
Shots where another high-contrast object (not the subject) is close
to the AF frame and is either closer or further away than the
subject (such as a shot of someone against a background with
strongly contrasting elements

And speaking of AF frames, what types of autofocusing does the
A450 have? Canon's A530/A540 manual shows that the camera has 9
AutoFocus frames to choose from if you set the AF Frame to "ON" in
the menu. If you set it to "OFF", it will use only the central AF
frame, and this will probably help the camera to focus more quickly.
This setting may also be called AiAF. If your camera is set to use
AiAF, and that feature causes focusing to be slower, there's
something tricky about it that can cause some cameras to sometimes
focus faster and sometimes slower, without your realizing it.
According to the A530/A540 manual, the A540 utilizes AiAf in several
of its modes, including portrait, landscape, P, Tv, Av, M and some
others. The A530 is similar, but doesn't use AiAF in the Av or M
modes. So you could have AiAf enabled, but because the A530 is set
to Av (aperture) mode, the camera won't use it, but will focus only
using the center AF frame. But if you switch from Av to one of the
other modes, such as Tv, Portrait, etc., it will start using AiAF
and focusing might start taking longer to complete.

For your upcoming pictures of people at a short distance, try using
as much light as possible, especially if indoors, and avoid using
Portrait Mode unless they are of a small number of people who are
close together. Since unlike the days when people only used "film"
cameras, shooting digital costs virtually nothing unless you make
prints, so you can easily afford to experiment ahead of time. So
before the friends arrive, spend some time taking practice shots
similar to your intended pictures, but in several different lighting
conditions to see which ones work and which ones might cause the
camera to slow down.

"GPN" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

I am not sure what in my settings changed but whenever I take a picture
now, the amount of time my Cannon power Shot A540 takes to "record" the
pictre seems to be much longer (it takes a few seconds)


I would do the following, separately in this order and see if one of these
fixes the problem:

in the set up menus, it may be in several of them, I cannot remember (left
my 540 at the office) - select "reset to defaults"

try another memory card - buy a small obsolete ultra cheap one
the flash technology is pretty complex and has several failure modes, each
memory bit has a limited number of read/writes they can do and the circuitry
remaps things to even the load. I've killed two thumb drives by over
working them - same technology.

if the problem is overall cycle time (due to focusing, rather than mem card
writing) then the defalut settings above will turn the helper light back
on, it lights up the subject to assist the auto focus (see if it is doing
its flash light thing after setting to defaults, or find it in the camera
set up menu and turn it on)