Small P&S Shutter Lag Times ?

I have been asked to help buy a compact digital camera, and am currently,
with the intended purchaser, making our shortlist of models to look at based
on published spec.s and reviews. But as we all know, published spec.s very
rarely say anything about shutter lag...

She wants a camera that can go with her all the time, so it needs to be
small. Main interests are landscape and - the impetus for buying the thing
in the first place - a new kitten. So a lens that goes reasonably wide
(insofar as they do) would be good, and a bit of reach at the other end
would also help. Something of, say, five or six MP up would be enough.
And, obviously, for the kitten, minimal shutter lag is absolutely critical.

I'm sure this has been discussed at regular intervals, but I couldn't see a
recent thread on it, and anything older is likely to exclude many more
recent models, so thought I'd ask the question 'afresh'.

Any comments or experience on models fitting the above criteria that have
either particularly short (good) or long (bad) shutter lag would be very
much appreciated. I suppose long start-up time would also be a bad thing,
so any experience there would be useful as well.

(Models she's shortlisted so far include Ricoh Caplios, various Pentaxes, a
Samsung, Olympus, and Fujis, but other suggestions welcome.)

Very many thanks (and Happy New Year),


Peter
--
http://www.bard-hill.co.uk

In article , Bandicoot
wrote:

I have been asked to help buy a compact digital camera, and am currently,
with the intended purchaser, making our shortlist of models to look at based
on published spec.s and reviews. But as we all know, published spec.s very
rarely say anything about shutter lag...

She wants a camera that can go with her all the time, so it needs to be
small. Main interests are landscape and - the impetus for buying the thing
in the first place - a new kitten. So a lens that goes reasonably wide
(insofar as they do) would be good, and a bit of reach at the other end
would also help. Something of, say, five or six MP up would be enough.
And, obviously, for the kitten, minimal shutter lag is absolutely critical.

I'm sure this has been discussed at regular intervals, but I couldn't see a
recent thread on it, and anything older is likely to exclude many more
recent models, so thought I'd ask the question 'afresh'.

Any comments or experience on models fitting the above criteria that have
either particularly short (good) or long (bad) shutter lag would be very
much appreciated. I suppose long start-up time would also be a bad thing,
so any experience there would be useful as well.

(Models she's shortlisted so far include Ricoh Caplios, various Pentaxes, a
Samsung, Olympus, and Fujis, but other suggestions welcome.)

Very many thanks (and Happy New Year),


Peter

The only real effective way to account for shutter lag in a P&S is
technique. Pre-squeezing to set focus and exposure... then waiting
for the shot. Release of the shutter from this point is instantaneous.
Can be problematic if the lighting of the composition changes (kitten
runs from shaddow to sun) or the subject changes distance. But the
second one is not so bad with many P&Ss because they have decent DoF
with the wide angle and relatively slow lens.

On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:34:59 -0600, Steve Cutchen wrote:

In article , Bandicoot
wrote:

I have been asked to help buy a compact digital camera, and am currently,
with the intended purchaser, making our shortlist of models to look at based
on published spec.s and reviews. But as we all know, published spec.s very
rarely say anything about shutter lag...

She wants a camera that can go with her all the time, so it needs to be
small. Main interests are landscape and - the impetus for buying the thing
in the first place - a new kitten. So a lens that goes reasonably wide
(insofar as they do) would be good, and a bit of reach at the other end
would also help. Something of, say, five or six MP up would be enough.
And, obviously, for the kitten, minimal shutter lag is absolutely critical.

I'm sure this has been discussed at regular intervals, but I couldn't see a
recent thread on it, and anything older is likely to exclude many more
recent models, so thought I'd ask the question 'afresh'.

Any comments or experience on models fitting the above criteria that have
either particularly short (good) or long (bad) shutter lag would be very
much appreciated. I suppose long start-up time would also be a bad thing,
so any experience there would be useful as well.

(Models she's shortlisted so far include Ricoh Caplios, various Pentaxes, a
Samsung, Olympus, and Fujis, but other suggestions welcome.)

Very many thanks (and Happy New Year),


Peter

The only real effective way to account for shutter lag in a P&S is
technique. Pre-squeezing to set focus and exposure... then waiting
for the shot. Release of the shutter from this point is instantaneous.
Can be problematic if the lighting of the composition changes (kitten
runs from shaddow to sun) or the subject changes distance. But the
second one is not so bad with many P&Ss because they have decent DoF
with the wide angle and relatively slow lens.

Many of them have a "sport mode" that is intended to minimize lag.

I keep hearing about these P&S cameras with "relatively slow lens" but all
the ones that I find "interesting" have f/2.8 lenses, which as zooms go
are quite fast.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

In article , J. Clarke
wrote:

On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:34:59 -0600, Steve Cutchen wrote:

In article , Bandicoot
wrote:

I have been asked to help buy a compact digital camera, and am currently,
with the intended purchaser, making our shortlist of models to look at
based
on published spec.s and reviews. But as we all know, published spec.s very
rarely say anything about shutter lag...

She wants a camera that can go with her all the time, so it needs to be
small. Main interests are landscape and - the impetus for buying the thing
in the first place - a new kitten. So a lens that goes reasonably wide
(insofar as they do) would be good, and a bit of reach at the other end
would also help. Something of, say, five or six MP up would be enough.
And, obviously, for the kitten, minimal shutter lag is absolutely critical.

I'm sure this has been discussed at regular intervals, but I couldn't see a
recent thread on it, and anything older is likely to exclude many more
recent models, so thought I'd ask the question 'afresh'.

Any comments or experience on models fitting the above criteria that have
either particularly short (good) or long (bad) shutter lag would be very
much appreciated. I suppose long start-up time would also be a bad thing,
so any experience there would be useful as well.

(Models she's shortlisted so far include Ricoh Caplios, various Pentaxes, a
Samsung, Olympus, and Fujis, but other suggestions welcome.)

Very many thanks (and Happy New Year),


Peter

The only real effective way to account for shutter lag in a P&S is
technique. Pre-squeezing to set focus and exposure... then waiting
for the shot. Release of the shutter from this point is instantaneous.
Can be problematic if the lighting of the composition changes (kitten
runs from shaddow to sun) or the subject changes distance. But the
second one is not so bad with many P&Ss because they have decent DoF
with the wide angle and relatively slow lens.

Many of them have a "sport mode" that is intended to minimize lag.

I keep hearing about these P&S cameras with "relatively slow lens" but all
the ones that I find "interesting" have f/2.8 lenses, which as zooms go
are quite fast.

2.8 at wide angle... 5.4 or so zoomed out.

technique. Pre-squeezing to set focus and exposure... then waiting
for the shot. Release of the shutter from this point is instantaneous.

No it is not. Recently a lot of camera's have reduced the shutterlag for
pre-squeezing (pre-focussing and ae) to about or under 1/10 of a second.
But not to long ago there where camera's which to more than 3/10 of
a second using pre-focussing (or even over a second).
The fastest I have seen is 0.06 seconds. Which is still not instantaneous,
but getting close.
I believe that the fastes DSLR now manages in 0.035 seconds.

Old SLR's used to have a shutterlag of around 0.05 seconds, fastest was
a special constructed canon with a shutterlag of 0.008 seconds.

1/10 of a second is for a lot of situations still noticeble, but it is a
real
improvement from the shutterlag of most camera's a few years ago.

ben

In article ,
Steve Cutchen wrote:

The only real effective way to account for shutter lag in a P&S is
technique. Pre-squeezing to set focus and exposure... then waiting
for the shot. Release of the shutter from this point is instantaneous.

Maybe it is on *your* camera but it certainly isn't on mine. They
only way I've been able to deal with the problem is by pushing
the release button early and that's pretty much a guess.

--
http://yosemitephotos.net/

wrote:
In article ,
Steve Cutchen wrote:

The only real effective way to account for shutter lag in a P&S is
technique. Pre-squeezing to set focus and exposure... then waiting
for the shot. Release of the shutter from this point is instantaneous.

Maybe it is on *your* camera but it certainly isn't on mine. They
only way I've been able to deal with the problem is by pushing
the release button early and that's pretty much a guess.

Focusing is slow. Most modern digitals have pretty decent time from
end-of-focus to exposure. dpreview.com measures this and related times
and reports them in their reviews, so you can find independently
measured numbers for many cameras.

http://www.cameras.co.uk/html/shutte...omparisons.cfm

wrote in message
...
http://www.cameras.co.uk/html/shutte...omparisons.cfm

They have an interesting definition of shutter lag.
"The Shutter Lag Comparison Table shows the amount of time it takes each
camera to record one shot and five shots"

It is supposed to be the time taken from pressing the release until the
shutter operates and has /nothing/ to do with how long it takes to record
the image.

The table appears to be meaningless as far as shutter lag goes.


Anyway most cameras can operate faster if you turn off automatic white
balance.
It certainly slows mine down.
The same is true of auto exposure but its more difficult to live without.

http://www.cameras.co.uk/html/shutte...omparisons.cfm

They have an interesting definition of shutter lag.
"The Shutter Lag Comparison Table shows the amount of time it takes each
camera to record one shot and five shots"

It is supposed to be the time taken from pressing the release until the
shutter operates and has /nothing/ to do with how long it takes to record
the image.

The sites use of the word record is misleading. Shutter lag times
show ARE for the time taken from pressing the release until the
shutter operates. If you'd include the record time also then the
times would be much slower than the fast times stated.

The table appears to be meaningless as far as shutter lag goes.

Not so. The table can be arranged by brand, category of camera,
five shot, or one shot lag times. Not electronic record times as you
believe.

Anyway most cameras can operate faster if you turn off automatic white
balance.
It certainly slows mine down.
The same is true of auto exposure but its more difficult to live without.