When I take a picture with my digital camera, there is a 1-2 second delay between the pressing of the button and the actual recording of the image. Thus, when attempting to take photos of people in action, I don’t get what I really want, because the subject has moved.
What exactly is going on inside the camera that causes this delay?
Is this phenomenon true of all digital cameras?
Or is it just my brand (Olympus)?
Or is it true of all digital cameras below a certain price range?
Can you even get a digital camera that takes the photo instantaneously, like my film SLR?
To answer part of your question: yes, it’s common for cheaper digitals, particularly non-SLR digitals. It’s the primary reason I moved up to an SLR (Nikon D-100). It’s what you see is what you get, just like a film camera, and can shoot several ‘frames’ per second. I also have an Olympus Camedia, and it just annoys the crap out of me, although it works well for macro photography.
Do you have autofocus turned on? If it’s on, try turning it off. I’ve used digital cameras (not Olympus, but I can’t remember the brand–Sony, maybe) that had a long delay if autofocus was turned on. Really annoying!
The best way of overcoming it is to make sure you are already focused on the subject - press the shutter button halfway to lock the focus, and hold it there until you want to take the shot.
There is still a small delay but it’s normally more like 0.2-0.4 seconds, which is more manageable.
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I believe it has to do with the way the CCD works - electrons have to be shunted around or something before it can record the image.
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Is there a name for this flaw/feature? I’m thinking of being in the market for a digital camera, and this annoys the heck out of me. I’ve surfed around a bit and some people were calling it “shutter delay.” So I’d look for a camera with a short shutter delay? Or is there a better word for it?
Colophon, my experience with astronomical CCDs is that this isn’t an issue. But they might be different. My reading seemed to indicate that it was the camera focusing, deciding whether to flash, computing exposure time, etc.
Many digital cameras have a prefocus, where you hold the shutter button down half way. So that when you press it all the way the shot is virtually instant. I make good use of this feature with my camera (and will be hoping it does the trick during the Manx TT)
Granted, photography is an art and therefore is reasonable to post in Cafe Society. However, the question is also a technical (computer-related sort of) question, and you may get better answers in the forum called General Questions.
Rather than move this thread, vertizontal, I am giving you permission to post there as well. (Be sure to say that I’ve given this permission, since normally double-posting is not allowed. I’m making an exception for this case.)
Can’t think of what the delay can be other than the auto-focus getting ready. All the digital cameras I’ve ever used have near-instantaneous press-and-shoot times.
If the auto-focus thing bugs you, there are some cameras that will do “continual focus”, where they’re always keeping the picture in focus. Theoretically that ought to eliminate the “delay” problem.
Nope, we’re talking about a delay that occurs when taking regular, non-flash photos.
I will experiment with turning the auto-focus off, to see what happens.
I guess I’m somewhat surprised about the delay because of how well TTL (through the lens) flash metering works. It’s my understanding that when the flash on my regular film SLR is set to TTL, that after the flash starts illuminating, the light meter in the camera reads the light coming through the lens, and then tells to flash to stop illuminating when it senses that enough light for a good exposure has come through. All this must occur within few milliseconds for it to work properly, yet it does.
So by comparison, the circuitry in my digital camera seems extremely slow.
Other than the Nikon D-100 already mentioned, what other digital cameras work well?
At the cost of battery life, I think it should be mentioned… so only go into “continual focus” mode when you’re just about ready to shoot.
Older (and cheaper) digital cameras have it the worst. I have a 3 megapixel Sony camera from the late '90s, and it has about three full seconds between first prepping the autofocus and being ready to take the shot. My friend’s DSC-W1 has a delay of less than a second (in good light, of course… low light makes it take longer).
But yeah, SLR’s are lightning quick. Satisfying as all hell, too. A nice sharp CLICK. Beautiful machines.
There can be delay between shots as well - removable media memory such as compact flash (I don’t know what Olympus uses) is fairly slow - so high speed memory can help with writing those files. As well most cameras don’t have much of an internal buffer so only can take a picture at a time.
I have had a couple Canon cameras and with my old S200, there can sometimes be a significant pause before it takes a picture. I now have a Digital Rebel SLR and it works much like a regular SLR would, there is only a delay if the flash has to charge, I’ve already taken 4 pictures in burst mode or it needs to autofocus. I don’t use burst that often (ever) so that’s not a problem, and I generally try to focus before I need to take the picture. Still the autofocus on the Rebel is quite fast.
I don’t think it has anything to do with autofocus, (though obviously this takes time too). I have a cheapo digital camera with fixed focus and it has a significant delay. It’s doing the light metering etc, ensuring there’s no overexposure. Obviously there’s some drawback (power use?) to having it perform this function continually, so it only does it once you press the button, and it takes time…
I assume the more expensive the camera the quicker the electronics, which is why SLRs would be faster.
I don’t use my cheapo digital much, the lag makes it a pain to shoot anything that’s not completely stationary.
Any digital SLR will function just like a film SLR (for the most part). The only real thing to keep in mind is the exposure latitude of digital is similar to slide film, rather than print film. Most DSLRs have about 5 stops of dynamic range. I have a low end DSLR (Canon Digital Rebel), but the image quality is outstanding, and with the firmware hack, it enables most of the things that separated it from the mid-range level (mirror lock up, flash exposure compensation, etc).
Low end DSLRs are still somewhat pricey. I don’t know what lens system you have for your film SLR, but I’d get a DSLR that will use the same lenses. The Digital Rebel XT is new from Canon, and it runs around $800 for the body. You can still get the original for around $650 for the body. If you’re a Nikon shooter, the Nikon D70 is around $900 for the body, and if you’re a Pentax shooter, you can pick up an *ist D or DS for under a thousand as well.
I think much of this delay is due to the time for data compression. Cheaper cameras will have less powerful data compression hardware, so will take longer to compress the image for storage.
The delay (shutter lag) is caused by the processing needed to be done by the digital camera to set up the shot. You can do certain things to remove much of the shutter lag, like pre-focusing, setting ISO, using manual controls, but the bottom line is that digital cameras need to do more futzing around before a shot than film cameras do.
Having said that, it’s much better now than it was a few years ago. First, dSLRs pretty much eliminate the problem but at the cost of, well, cost, and size and complexity. The new Canon cameras use their new Digic-II chip processing chip which makes things MUCH faster, almost eliminating shutter lag. I was using my new Canon SD300 and my old Oly C-720 this weekend and the difference was extremely noticable.
There are other potential delays, such as flash refresh, and card writing latency, but those don’t seem to be the problem here.
That’s what I thought of as well, but I realised that shouldn’t really matter - the process of translating light to bits should occur before the data is then compressed, I suppose.
Anyway, my Sony DSC-P51 had a small delay, but my Sony DSC-P73 no longer does, which is great and I recommend the camera - good value for money (about $200).