Canon PowerShot S110Canon updates their Digital ELPH with improved color, movie capture, and direct print capabilities!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 5/24/2001 |
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 an Imaging Resource proprietary test system.
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Normal Card |
Lexar 12x |
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| Power On -> First shot |
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Time is total time from power on to first picture, not just time to telescope lens. Fairly fast for a camera with a telescoping lens.
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| Shutdown |
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First time is for lens retraction if camera done writing to card, second figure is from last frame snapped to card ready to remove.
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Time to first shot when switching fromplayback mode. (Fairly fast)
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| Record to play (max/min res) |
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First time is for switch from record to play with no image being processed, second time is measured from shutter press to image ready to display.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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Quite fast. (Average in high-end consumer cameras is about 0.8 seconds) |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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Incredibly fast! (Average is 0.3 seconds) |
| Cycle time, large/fine files |
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Shorter time is for first 6-8 shots, then need to wait for the buffer to clear before taking next shots. |
| Buffer clearing time |
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Time to finish writing data to card after a series of shots. (Eg, time until card is ready for a full-speed series again.) Note nearly 2x faster performance with 12x card. |
| Cycle time, small/basic files |
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Quite fast. No slowdown due to buffer fill for more than 12 shots. |
| Continuous mode, large files |
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First time is for first 6-8 shots, then must flush each image to disk before next shot. (33% faster after buffer fill with 12x card.) |
| Continuous mode, small files |
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No buffer problems past at least 12 exposures (as far as we tested). |
The Powershot S110 is a pretty fast camera, with good shutter lag in full autofocus mode, amazing speed when prefocused by half-pressing the shutter button prior to the exposure, and very good cycle times. It seems to have a fairly large buffer memory, as it can take between six and eight shots at 2.2 second intervals before it has to wait for the buffer to empty. It also appears well able to take advantage of faster memory cards, as it's buffer-clearing time is almost twice as fast with a 12x Lexar card than slower models.
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