Olympus Camedia D-40 ZoomSuper-compact 4 megapixel model takes great pictures!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 10/8/2001 |
Shutter Lag/Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag or delay time before the shutter actually fires. This time is required for the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms 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 routinely measure it using an Imaging Resource proprietary test setup. The table below shows the times we measured for various camera operations.
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(secs) |
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| Power On -> First shot |
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Rather slow.
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| Shutdown |
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Also slow. (This is time to retract lens. Allow longer if file being saved to card, before card can be removed.)
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Very fast.
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| Record to play (max/min res) |
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Longer time is for max res uninterpolated JPEG, immediate switch to quick review. Shorter time is for quick review, with camera already done saving image to card. Shortest time is for immediate "preview" display in record mode.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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First time is for wide angle, second for telephoto. A bit slower than average. |
| Shutter lag, continuous AF |
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Strangely, slower than normal AF. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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Rather slow. |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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Quite a bit faster than average. (Average is about 0.3) |
| Cycle time, large/fine files |
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Shorter time is for first four shots, then need to wait for the buffer to clear. Quite fast. |
| Cycle time, small/basic files |
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Pretty fast. Variable times, 2.1 seconds is the slowest we saw, down to 1.6. 1.88 is the average. |
| Cycle time, Full-size TIFF files |
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TIFF mode files are huge, take a long time to write. Not bad time, compared to other cameras. |
| Continuous mode, large files, w/AF |
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First time is for first four shots, then slower after buffer is full. These times are for AF enabled between shots. |
| Continuous mode, large files, no AF |
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First time is for first four shots, then slower after buffer is full. These times are for no AF between shots. |
| Continuous mode, small/basic files |
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Pretty fast. ~145 frames before buffer full. |
While it's slow starting up and shutting down, the D-40Zoom is pretty fast between shots. We'd like to see the shutter lag lower, but the prefocus lag (obtained by half-pressing and holding the shutter button before the shot itself) is very fast. Shooting full-size (uninterpolated) maximum-quality JPEGs, cycle times are very good, and the buffer holds four shots before forcing you to slow down. Very good performance. (But can we have faster autofocus next time?)
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