Canon PowerShot S20Canon packs 3 megapixels and a 2x optical zoom into their "smallest digicam" body!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 4/4/2000 |
Shutter Lag/Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a delay or lag time before the shutter actually fires. This 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 with a custom electronic test setup.
On the S20, we found the shutter lag time with full auto focus to be about 1.3 seconds. Alternatively, shutter lag with prefocus (a half press of the shutter button before the actual exposure itself) is only 0.25 seconds. The time for full autofocus is a bit slower than much of the competition, while the prefocused time is a bit better than average.
The camera obviously has some buffer memory, as the first three shots in high-res mode are much faster than the subsequent ones. We found the shot-to-shot cycle time at the maximum resolution and image quality setting to be about 4.0 seconds for first three shots of a rapid fire series. The time then increased to 7.0 seconds for all succeeding ones. It seems like the camera is continuously emptying out the buffer memory as you prepare for the next shot. So, if you wait more than 10 or 15 seconds after the last shot, you'll be able to shoot another three in rapid succession. In the lower resolution settings, the minimum shot-to-shot cycle time is about 3.0 seconds, but you can shoot proportionately more frames before you run out of buffer memory. Shot-to-shot cycle times in the Continuous Shooting mode are 2.0 seconds in the lowest quality mode.
The S20 takes about 2.2 seconds to start up and about 2.5 seconds to shut down. Going from Record to Playback mode took an average of 2.7 seconds while flipping back from Playback into Record mode took around 2.5 seconds. The record-to-play delay would be vexing were it not for the very handy indefinite review option we mentioned earlier, obtained simply by holding down the shutter button after the exposure.
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