Sony MVC-CD300Sony expands its CD-equipped camera line, adding erasability, buffer memory, a 3-megapixel CCD, and a more compact case!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 2/28/2001 |
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 using an Imaging Resource proprietary test system.
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| Power On -> First shot |
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Slower than average. The longer time is for a new disc, the shorter one if the disc hasn't been changed since the camera was last turned on.
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| Shutdown |
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About average
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Time until first shot is captured, from "instant review" mode or normal playback mode. Quite fast.
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| Record to play (max/min res) |
3.28/5.58 |
Images appear quickly as a low res version, then "fill-in" within a few seconds. Quite a bit slower than average, due to the relatively slow CD data rate.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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About average. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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A bit slower than average. |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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A little better than average
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| Cycle Time, max/min resolution |
2.7-4.9 (range) |
A bit faster than average for first two shots, then slower than average. Top numbers are for large/fine files, bottom for small/normal. Cycle time varies greatly for small files. |
| Cycle time, continuous mode |
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Moderately fast, burst of only three frames though. (Max/min res are the same.) |
Shutter lag on the MVC-CD300 is about average among cameras we've tested, at 0.83 seconds for full autofocus, or 0.20 seconds when the camera is prefocused. Manual focus is a bit slower than average, at 0.68 seconds.
One change in the CD300 vs the earlier CD1000 is that the CD300 now has some RAM buffer memory, to reduce the wait time between shots while the camera writes to the disc. After the first shot, you can snap another in as little as three seconds, a pretty fast cycle time, even among higher-end digicams. There's only one frame's worth of buffer memory though: After the first two shots, you'll find yourself waiting about 7.1 seconds on average to snap the next one. Cycle time when shooting low-resolution files is much faster on average, but shows an odd variability, with cycle times ranging from 2.7 to 4.9 seconds. We think this could be caused by the buffer memory filling and emptying as you continue shooting: Only occasionally does it fill nearly all the way, resulting in the 4.9 second figure, while most of the time it's ready for the next shot in only 2.7 seconds.
Like other models in the Mavica series, the CD300 starts up from power-off fairly slowly, because the camera has to check the disc to see how much space is left, and where the next image should be stored. The camera obviously has a trick or two up its sleeve in this area though: If you load a new disc (or just open and shut the back door with the power off), the camera somehow knows it has to scan the entire disc to determine space and where the next picture will go. This takes 18.2 seconds. If you just shut the CD300 down without removing the disc though, the next time it starts up, it seems to recognized the disc, and startup time is reduced to only 6.5 seconds. Shutdown time is about average for a camera with a telescoping lens.
Other than the long startup and record-to-playback times, we found the CD300 to be a pretty responsive camera: We actually were very surprised to find that it only had a one-image buffer memory, since we almost never ran up against buffer memory limitations in our (admittedly leisurely) shooting with it.
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