Shutter Lag In P&S Cameras

[rpcrowe]

I belong to a dog forum which has a photography section. People are often asking me about how to find a P&S camera with the shortest shutter lag (of course, they don't phrase the question in those exact terms).

These people are not photographers and don't have any desire to spend the money on a DSLR, nor would they want to carry around a DSLR or learn to use one. They simply want a camera which gives the dog the shortest possible time to leave the frame between pressing the shutter button and acquiring the image. Even, when you prefocus with most P&S cameras, there is an extended shuttter lag which is generally far longer than the lag of a DSLR.

My forum friends are tired of images showing only the tails of the dogs as they leave the frame during the shutter lag. I have not been following P&S development over the last number of years (my last P&S was the Olympus 5050-Z) but, I expect that there might have been improvements in shutter lag since then.

Is there a site that lists the shutter lag of various cameras?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Richard,

I don't know of one which does it in a tabular form, which would obviously be great, but Steve's Digicams does reviews which have this kind of info. see the Timing Test Results panel on lower right hand side of this sample Conclusion page for Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS.

Cheers,

[Shadowman]

Richard,

Advise your friends that even though they don't plan to upgrade or consider themselves anything more than an amateur, they should still read about the technology, especially about the purpose of selecting one of the shooting conditions from the camera's menu. When the photographer chooses the fireworks setting or the landscape setting, they should know that camera is selecting a longer shutter speed for fireworks and a wider aperture for landscape settings. Once they start asking "why did it choose that setting" they will be well on their way to taking better photographs. If they don't ask then they will never get more than the dog's tail unless they are lucky.

[Wirefox]

Richard I am not sure how up to date THIS table is but worth a shuffty. At a glance it looks like the SONY

Good luck

Steve

[Dave Humphries]

Richard I am not sure how up to date THIS table is but worth a shuffty. At a glance it looks like the SONY

Good luck

Steve

Looks fairly current to me, a good find Steve.

Cheers,