Kyocera FineCam S3 ZoomKyocera packs 3 megapixels into the smallest zoom-equipped digicam yet. Too cool!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 7/1/2001 |
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 Imaging Resource proprietary testing. The table below shows the times we measured for various camera operations.
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| Power On -> First shot |
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Slower than average.
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| Shutdown |
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Fairly fast.
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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About average.
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| Record to play (max/min res) |
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Long time is for TIFF file format, immediate switch to play after shutter trip, shorter time is for JPEG formats.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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A bit slower to much slower than average. (Average is about 0.75) Highly variable, doesn't seem to matter if wide or tele. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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Faster than average. |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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About average. |
| Cycle time, large/fine files |
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Shorter time is for first three shots, then ranges between 6 and 10 seconds. Somewhat slower than average. |
| Cycle time, small/basic files |
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Average speed. |
| Cycle time, TIFF files |
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TIFF mode files are huge, take a very long time to write. |
Overall, the Finecam S3 is a bit slower than average. Its shutter lag due to autofocus operation was longer than average and also highly variable, with shutter delay times ranging from 0.9 to 1.7 seconds. Focusing on well-contrasting objects at a distance though, shutter delay seems to run a bit over a second. With manual focus though, shutter delay dropped to only 0.32 seconds a better than average performance. Cycle times were also a bit slower than average, at 6 seconds between shots for the first three shots, then increasing to a range of between 6 and 10 seconds. Bottom line, the S3 will be fine for casual shots, just not the first choice for sports or other fast-paced action.
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