Minolta Dimage 7Minolta unleashes the first 5-megapixel camera, with a tack-sharp 7x zoom lens, and amazingly sensitive electronic viewfinder!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 5/23/2001 |
Shutter Lag/Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a digital camera, there's usually a lag time before the shutter actually fires. This time allows the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms to do their work and can amount to a significant delay in some situations. Since this number is rarely reported by manufacturers or reviewers, and can significantly affect the picture-taking experience, Imaging Resource now measures shutter lag and cycle times using a proprietary electronic test setup.
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| Power On -> First shot |
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Time from power-up to first shot. Rather slow, given that there's no lens to extend.
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| Shutdown |
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Time to finish writing average large/fine file to the CF card. (Again, a bit slow, given no lens to retract.)
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Time until first shot is captured. Quite fast.
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| Record to play |
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First time is for immediate switch after pressing shutter, second is time to display image from quiescent state in capture mode. About average.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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Longer time is for telephoto, shorter for wide angle. Both figures are a bit slower than average. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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A good bit faster than average. |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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Quite a bit faster than average.
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| Cycle Time, max/min resolution |
1.66 50.7 |
First number is for large/fine files, second for small/economy. Last time is for full res TIFF files. Oddly, small/economy files take longer between shots than large/fine. Up to 4 large/fine files this fast, then must wait ~12 seconds between shots. Quite fast for full-res files. Times are in manual focus mode, add ~0.8 seconds per frame for autofocus delay. |
| Cycle time, continuous mode |
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Fairly fast. Captures four images, then takes 13.6 seconds for the next. |
The Dimage 7 is a bit of a mixed bag speed-wise. Shot to shot, it's very fast for up to four shots at a time, thanks to a good-sized buffer memory. Continuous mode is also very fast. Autofocus delay is longer than average, a fact that surprised us: Prerelease, Minolta touted its phase-detect autofocus as being both faster and more accurate than normal contrast-detect schemes. It actually appears to be somewhat slower. Shutter lag in manual and prefocus modes is quite a bit faster than average. We're sure to hear about it, so note that the 0.13 second "shutter lag" reported by some other review sites is simply the figure given by Minolta on their spec sheet: It corresponds to the shutter lag when the camera is used in a prefocused mode, that is, when the shutter button is half-pressed before the shot is taken. - And actually, we measured this delay time at 0.17 seconds, not 0.13. Overall, a pretty speedy camera, held back from real speed-demon status by slower than usual autofocus times.
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