Olympus C-3000 ZoomOlympus develops a slightly slower, but lot cheaper version of the C-3030 Zoom. (Looks like a great bargain!)<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 8:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 5/30/2000 |
Shutter Lag/Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag time before the shutter actually fires. This time is to allow the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms time to do their work, and can amount to a fairly long delay in some situations. Since this number is almost never reported on, and can significantly affect the picture taking experience, we now routinely measure it.
In testing the shutter delay performance on the C-3000, we discovered that it varied significantly, depending on whether the lens was in its wide angle or telephoto positions, with the performance being much faster at the wide angle setting. In wide angle mode, the C-3000 Zoom's shutter lag time is quite good, among the best we've seen among the consumer-level digicams we've tested to date. At telephoto, it's a bit on the slow side. Interestingly, the "continuous autofocus" option actually slows the performance at the wide angle end of the lens' range, although it does improve matter substantially at the telephoto end. With manual focus, the lag time is about average. Its delay from a prefocused condition (with the shutter button half-pressed and held prior to the exposure itself) is significantly faster than average. Startup time is somewhat long, due to the need for the lens to telescope out into its operating position. (This is typical of cameras with retracting lenses.)
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| Power On -> First shot |
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Start with lens retracted. Time is delay until first shot captured.
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| Shutdown |
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Time until lens is retracted, camera is powered down. (No pending image processing though.)
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Time is delay until first shot captured.
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| Record to play (max/min res) |
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Slower for max res images
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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Wide/Tele
(focus is faster at wide angle) |
| Shutter lag, continuous autofocus |
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Wide/Tele
(strangely, faster in tele in this mode) |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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VERY fast!
(Prefocus means half-pressed shutter before shot.) |
When it comes to cycle times, we were surprised to find the C-3000 Zoom as responsive as it was. (We expected slower performance, knowing that it lacked the large buffer memory of the C-3030 Zoom.) The C-3000 responds very much like other cameras we've tested with modest-sized buffer capacity: It captures the first two shots in high resolution mode quite quickly, then makes you wait 8 seconds for the subsequent shots. Unlike the C-3030, the maximum number of shots you can capture before waiting increases as you decrease the image resolution and quality setting: At the lowest-quality setting for its "SQ" mode, you can capture 56 shots in rapid succession! - (Interestingly, for low-resolution shooting, the C-3000's memory architecture performsbetterthan that of the C-3030!) Overall, very reasonable cycle times compared to other 3 megapixel cameras currently on the market, particularly considering the selling price.
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(secs) |
(frames/sec) |
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| TIFF Autofocus |
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No memory buffering in TIFF mode. |
| SHQ Autofocus |
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First 2 shots
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| SHQ Autofocus |
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Delay till next 2 shots
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| SHQ Manual Focus |
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First 2 shots
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| SHQ Manual Focus |
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Delay till next 2 shots
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| SQ2 (640x480) Autofocus |
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First 56(!) shots
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| SQ2 (640x480) Manual Focus |
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First 56(!) shots
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| Continuous Mode, no AF, HQ |
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Autofocus on first frame only. Highly variable timing |
| Continuous Mode, AF, HQ |
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Autofocus for each frame. Highly variable timing |
| Continuous Mode, no A/F, SQ2 |
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Consistent timing
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We mentioned the C-3000's high speed in continuous or "sequence" mode earlier. Sequence mode has two options, normal and autofocus. In normal sequence mode, the camera focuses and calculates exposure and white balance once, as soon as the shutter button is pressed. These settings are then held for the entire series of five rapid-fire shots. Oddly, we found the shot-to-shot times in sequence mode to be quite variable, ranging from 0.64 to 1.01 seconds in non-autofocus mode, and from 1.33 to 1.98 seconds with autofocus enabled for each shot. At low resolution though, we found the timing to be very consistent. (Sequence mode is another obvious area of difference from the C-3030 Zoom model: Not only are the frame rates lower (and more variable to boot), but SHQ mode isn't available in sequence mode on the C-3000. The highest resolution/quality mode available is HQ mode.).
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