Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F707Wow! 5 megapixels, a super-sharp lens, Hologram AF, NightShot, NightFraming and more! Killer technology, great photos from Sony!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 08/20/2001 (Full production model update 11/20/2001) |
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. Quite fast.
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| Shutdown |
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Time to finish writing average large/fine file to the
Memory Stick. (No lens to retract, so quite fast.)
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Time until first shot is captured. Very 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.
NOTE though, that the camera shows a preview of the image right after
the exposure anyway, so the first time (4.59 secs) could be considered
to be nearly zero.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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Longer time is for telephoto, shorter for wide angle. Both figures are slightly slower than average. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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A bit slower than average. |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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Somewhat faster than average.
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| Cycle Time, max/min resolution |
2.25 39.3 |
First number is for large/fine
files, second for small/economy. Last time is for full res TIFF files.
Overall, quite fast, but no buffer memory. |
| Cycle time, continuous mode ("Burst 3" mode) |
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Quite fast. Captures three images, then needs to wait 8.2 (low res) or 12.8 (high res) seconds for buffer to clear before capturing the next burst of 3 shots. |
Overall, the DSC-F707 is a pretty fast camera, with a great startup time thanks to not having to telescope its lens before it can shoot. Autofocus speed is a little slow, although the spread between wide and telephoto performance isn't as large as is often the case. (Many competing cameras autofocus in 0.7 - 0.8 seconds, vs the 1.0-1.1 of the '707.) On the other hand, its prefocus lag is noticeably faster than average, at 0.18 seconds (vs the roughly 0.3 seconds that we usually find). Cycle time is pretty fast, particularly given that the camera doesn't seem to use buffer memory, but writes the files to the card as it goes.
One note we feel compelled to make is that the F707 is one of the cameras that "penalizes" you for pressing the shutter button too quickly after the previous exposure. Quite a few cameras do this (although at least one internet reviewer seems to be selectively criticizing products that do so), but we really don't understand why this should be: Why not just have the camera immediately fire off another exposure if it sees the shutter button still pressed when it's finished saving the previous image? On the F707 (and as noted, many other consumer-level digicams), if you press and hold the shutter immediately after an exposure, the camera won't shoot again until you release and re-press the shutter after it's done processing. - Just a suggestion for Sony's engineers for the next model! (Or, maybe for a firmware upgrade for the current one?)
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