Short and sweet: our animal shelter takes digital photos of all adoptable animals to put online, and next week, doing that is going to become my responsibility. One of the major problems we’ve had in the past with taking these pictures is that our current camera has an almost 1-second delay from the time you press the “take picture” button until the time the photo is taken–prefocusing doesn’t seem to make a difference. While this is fine when you’re taking a picture of a person, puppies aren’t willing to hold still for a whole second.
So we are looking for a new camera, with two major features:
It has a very low shutter-lag; and
It’s cheap.
It’d be nice if uploading the photos is a simple process, in case someone else takes over the job after me; but if it’s a complicated process, we can cope with that.
Any recommendations would be much appreciated! I’ve been looking at ZDNet’s reviews, but am having a hard time figuring out how to sort for these two features (and the additional third feature of “it’s available for purchase.”)
Camera revies on Imaging Resource usually have shutter lag measurements. Also you probably want a camera with an optical viewfinder. A large fraction of your “shutter lag” may in fact be LCD viewfinder lag.
I don’t have any specific recommendations, sorry. This is one application where you really want a digital SLR, but none of them are “cheap” in any sense of the word.
Can you explain the last sentence? I know the picture on the viewfinder updates well after the picture is actually snapped: I figured out the actual lag by taking a picture of a clock and seeing how far the second hand had moved between the time I snapped the photo and the time it was actually taken. (The viewfinder photo doesn’t come up until about 5 seconds after the photo is snapped).
Take a look at the Canon SD200. The new Digic-II chip allows for some of the lowest shutter lag in the current crop of cameras. I have the SD300 and it makes a huge difference over my previous digicam.
You can also pre-focus (push the button halfway down to prefocus) which will eliminate most of the remaining shutter lag.
If you are using the LCD viewfinder to take a photo, you are watching a delayed image. No matter how short the shutter lag is, you won’t capture exactly what’s on the LCD that instance. That’s all I meant.
Ah, that makes sense, and isn’t something I’d considered. Thanks!
Telemark, the SD200 looks very good; my only worry with it is the prominent redeye the review mentions. Is this a problem with all inexpensive cameras, do you know? (I’m very ignorant on the subject, as is probably obvious).
Redeye isn’t a problem with inexpensive cameras, it’s a problem with very small cameras where the lens is very close to the flash. In fact, the Canon SDxxx line is particularly bad with redeye.
You can deal with the shutter lag in part by doing the pre-focus trick, making sure your camera has an AF-illuminator lamp, and taking your picture in high light situations. A physically larger camera (of which there are many) will do a better job at reducing redeye. All the redeye reduction flashes will be next to useless with a dog, who can’t be relied on to look at the camera. But redeye (or greeneye in dogs) can be fixed up quickly in software.