Fuji FinePix S20 ProFuji's latest electronic SLR offers a high dynamic range Super CCD (6.7 million photosensors in a 3.4 megapixel array) that interpolates to 6.0 megapixels, plus an external flash sync connection!<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 8:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 04/27/2004 |
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 is the time required by
the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms 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, I routinely
measure it with a custom test setup I built for the purpose. (Crystal-controlled,
with a resolution of 0.001 second.) The table below shows the numbers I collected
for the FinePix S20 Pro.
| | ||
| | | |
| Power On -> First shot | | Time from power on to first shot captured. About average for a camera with a telescoping lens. Worst-case buffer clearing time (time until card can be removed) is about 23 seconds with a moderately fast card. |
| Shutdown | | Time to retract lens, assuming no card writes pending. About average to a bit slower than average. |
| Play to Record, first shot | | Rather slow. |
| Record to play (max/min res) | 1.4/0.7 | Top pair of numbers are for large/fine files, bottom pair are for small/basic. First number of each pair is for immediate switch to playback mode after capture, second is for switch after camera is done processing. A little slow for highest-resolution files. |
| Shutter lag, full autofocus | | First time is with lens set at wide angle, second time is with lens set to telephoto. Slightly faster than average. (Average is 0.8 - 1.0 seconds.) |
| Shutter lag, continuous autofocus | 0.88 | As is generally the case with cameras I've tested, continuous autofocus doesn't improve the shutter lag at all. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus | | Rather slow for this class of camera. |
| Shutter lag, prefocus | | About average these days, although many high-end models are faster. |
| Cycle Time, CF card, max/min res | | Oddly, the S20 Pro doesn't act as though it's using a buffer memory when shooting in single-shot mode. Shot to shot time is moderately good, but never seems to degrade, regardless of how many shots are captured. (This was with an only moderately fast memory card too, a Lexar 12x CF card.) As is the case with a number of cameras these days, the cycle time for small files is actually a bit longer than for larger ones, apparently due to the processing needed to resample the images to the lower resolution. |
| Cycle Time, xD card, max/min res | 1.75/1.56 | xD cards apparently write data somewhat slower in the S20 Pro than even the modestly fast Lexar 12x CF I used in these test. Here, the cycle time for large/fine files is longer, but the time for small/basic ones is faster. |
| Cycle Time, RAW file format, CF card | 1.86/8.13 | Interval between first two shots is 1.86 seconds, but stretches to 8.13 for subsequent RAW-format images with a 12x card. |
| Cycle Time, RAW file format, xD card | 1.74/3.70 | Interval between first two shots is 1.74 seconds, but stretches to 3.70 seconds for all subsequent ones. (Both numbers are faster than with a 12x CF card, which seems odd, given the difference we saw above between large and small JPEG files.) |
| Cycle Time, Top/Final 10 continuous mode, max/min res. | 0.24 (4.1 fps) |
Very fast for five shots, and "Final 10" mode is very handy for catching fast action. After buffer is full with large/fine images, it takes 10 seconds to clear with an xD card, 19 seconds with a fast CF card. (At 16 seconds, clearing time didn't improve all that much with a very fast SanDisk Ultra II CF card.) |
| Cycle Time, "long continuous" mode | (1.88 fps) | Camera writes to memory card continuously while shooting, so you can capture up to 40 large/fine frames this fast before needing to stop. Buffer clears almost immediately (a second or so), after which you can shoot another series of 40 images. Resolution is limited to the lowest level (1M), and this option is only available in Auto exposure mode. |
The S20 Pro is a fairly fast camera overall, but only average to slightly better than average in terms of shutter lag. Its cycle time in single-shot mode is a little curious, in that it's only moderately fast at over a second between shots, but that it can shoot at that pace more or less forever, seemingly not taking advantage of its buffer memory for single-fire shooting. While the S20 Pro's shutter lag is just about average though, it does still have very good cycle time performance, and its high-speed continuous modes are quite fast indeed. My favorite feature is the "Final 10" continuous mode, which shoots frames continuously at just over 4 frames/second while the shutter is held down, but then only records the last ten captured before you released the shutter button. This helps compensate for the photographer's reaction time, actually recording images beginning a second or so before he/she reacted to the subject. The standout for the S20 Pro is how quickly it can record its RAW-formatted files to xD cards, the 3.7 seconds required between shots in RAW mode (after the two-shot buffer is filled) being better than most competing models.
The S20 Pro's behavior with xD and CompactFlash memory cards was a little perplexing though. On the one hand, it was somewhat faster with CF cards when shooting JPEG-compressed images in single-shot mode, but significantly faster with xD cards when shooting RAW files and clearing its buffer memory. While it's not clear why this is the case, it does suggest that RAW shooters should stock up on large xD cards.
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