Fuji FinePix S9000

Shutter Lag/Cycle Times

When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag time or delay before the shutter actually fires. This corresponds to the time required for the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms to do their work, and can amount to a fairly long delay in some situations. Since this number is rarely reported (and even more rarely reported accurately), and can significantly affect the picture taking experience, I routinely measure both shutter delay and shot-to-shot cycle times for all cameras I test, using a test system I designed and built for the purpose. (Crystal-controlled, with a resolution of 0.001 second.) Here are the numbers I collected for the Fujifilm FinePix S9000:

The S9000 performance ranges from moderately fast to just average, depending on what figure you're looking at. Startup time and shutter response are reasonable, and quite good for a camera with a telescoping lens. Shot to shot times are slightly better than average, but continuous mode speed is a bit below par except in the Top4 mode, and even there isn't particularly impressive. Flash recharging time is just slightly on the slow side for its class, but downloading over the camera's USB 2.0 connection is exceptionally quick. Prefocused shutter lag is the one real standout - at just 0.11 second, this is blazingly fast, among the best on the market. We also noted that buffer clearing and shot-to-shot times were noticeably better with xD than with either a SanDisk Extreme III CF 1GB or a Kingston 50x card, with the xD capturing seven images and clearing the buffer in four seconds, and the CF cards capturing only four images and clearing in eight seconds. Clearing times in Top4 mode were 8.44 seconds for the xD card, and about 12.4 seconds for the CF cards. Time to bring up images and switch between images in Playback mode are really way too slow, almost always measuring four seconds between frames at the highest resolution.