Camera shopping: shutter lag?
My entry-level Sony (DSC W-120) has given up the ghost, and when I replace it I hope to do so with a camera that actually takes the picture when I press the button. That "shutter lag" thing really dri...
Forum Discussion
The least shutter lag I've had was my Leica M3, though Canon and Nikon rangerfinder cameras with focal plane shutters were pretty close, under 20 MS. This is about the minimum needed start firing a FP flash bulb so that it would be brightening as the shutter slit started crossing the film.
The fastest SLRs (I was using Nikon F and F2, Canon F1, Olympus Pen F, and Minolta) were about 40 ms, have to get the mirror up first, but more typically 60-80 for film SLR.
I usuually used the Leica for theater and dance, for quietness as well as minimum shutter lag. I was OK with the SLRs for most other action stuff, ball sports and auto racing, because I could anticipate action (still talkin about less than 1/10 second).
Then came autofocus. When you press the shutter, it has to find something to focus on, focus past it by whatever means, contrast or phase detection, and come back to the closest focus set point, the fire the shutter. 200 ms at best, 400-500 ms not unusual. In really hard to focus scenes, the most commonly used contrast detection focusing might hunt for a few seconds before just giving up, and either locking the camera or shooting out of focus. Camera is also calculating exposure, maybe evaluating scene for "scene mode" processing, but focusing is usually most of the delay.
Focusing time (and now face detection) is probably most of what your are experiencing as "shutter lag." Two fixes: prefocus on something static in the scene (many point and shoots can do this much) or focus manually. There can also be a gain by presetting exposure, and turning off scene evaluation.
All the point and shoots are slow, and most don't even have shutters, they just capture a still from a video stream being fed to the processor in the camera. But you can speed most of them up by doing more of the decision making yourself, taking advantage of what you can set with the shutter button at halfway, then lag to capture when you press the rest of the way will be minimized.
The fastest SLRs (I was using Nikon F and F2, Canon F1, Olympus Pen F, and Minolta) were about 40 ms, have to get the mirror up first, but more typically 60-80 for film SLR.
I usuually used the Leica for theater and dance, for quietness as well as minimum shutter lag. I was OK with the SLRs for most other action stuff, ball sports and auto racing, because I could anticipate action (still talkin about less than 1/10 second).
Then came autofocus. When you press the shutter, it has to find something to focus on, focus past it by whatever means, contrast or phase detection, and come back to the closest focus set point, the fire the shutter. 200 ms at best, 400-500 ms not unusual. In really hard to focus scenes, the most commonly used contrast detection focusing might hunt for a few seconds before just giving up, and either locking the camera or shooting out of focus. Camera is also calculating exposure, maybe evaluating scene for "scene mode" processing, but focusing is usually most of the delay.
Focusing time (and now face detection) is probably most of what your are experiencing as "shutter lag." Two fixes: prefocus on something static in the scene (many point and shoots can do this much) or focus manually. There can also be a gain by presetting exposure, and turning off scene evaluation.
All the point and shoots are slow, and most don't even have shutters, they just capture a still from a video stream being fed to the processor in the camera. But you can speed most of them up by doing more of the decision making yourself, taking advantage of what you can set with the shutter button at halfway, then lag to capture when you press the rest of the way will be minimized.
