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Kodak DC4800 Zoom Kodak's first true 3 megapixel consumer camera has excellent color and *amazing* low-light capability! Select a topic Reference: Datasheet DC4800 Sample Images --------------------------------- 1. Intro and Highlights 2. Executive Overview 3. Design 4. Viewfinder 5. Optics 6. Exposure & Flash 7. Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests 8. Operation & User Interface 9. Camera Modes & Menus 10. Image Storage & Interface 11. Video, Power, Software 12. Test Results & Conclusion --------------------------------- Print-Friendly Review Version Additional Resources and Other Links Reader Comments on DC4800 Review --------------------------------- Digital Camera Comparometer (TM) --------------------------------- <-- Digital Cameras (Home) <-- Digital Camera Reviews Index <<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests Review First Posted: 7/31/2000

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 allows 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 electronic test setup.

The DC4800 is a fairly fast camera overall, at less than 4 seconds from power on to the first shot (fast for a camera with a telescoping lens design), and only about a second between shots until the internal buffer memory fills. The buffer memory apparently is used to store full-resolution files, regardless of the resolution setting the camera's shooting at. Thus, the faster cycle times the buffer memory provides are only available for the first four shots, regardless of resolution setting. Likewise, since the camera seems to be subsampling the low-resolution images from higher-resolution ones, long sequences of low resolution images actually take longer than full-res shots. (The benefit of this approach though, is that the image quality at small image sizes is much better than cameras that simply leave out every other pixel when reading data from the sensor.) Generally very respectable timings though, for a high-resolution camera.

DC4800 Zoom Timings
Operation	Time (secs)	Notes
Power On -> First shot	3.7
Shutdown	2.3	(For lens retraction, could be up 80 seconds for full-res TIFF file to finish writing.)
Play to Record, first shot	1.6
Record to play	2.0
Shutter lag, full autofocus	0.85
Shutter lag, prefocus	0.28
Cycle Time, shot-shot, high res	1.0/11.3/31	Times are for full-res JPEGs before buffer fills (first 4 shots), after buffer fills, and for full-res TIFF
Cycle Time, shot-shot, low res	0.7/15	Times are for minimum-res JPEGs before buffer fills (first 4 shots), and then after buffer fills.