Olympus C-2040 ZoomOlympus updates an old favorite, producing a "third generation" two megapixel digicam.<<Exposure & Flash :(Previous) | (Next): Operation & User Interface>> Page 7:Shutter Lag & Cycle Time TestsReview First Posted: 2/20/2001 |
Shutter Lag/Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag time before the shutter actually fires. This time is to allow the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms time 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, we now routinely measure it using Imaging Resource proprietary test equipment.
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| Power On -> First shot |
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A bit faster than average for cameras with telescoping lenses.
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| Shutdown |
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About average
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| Play to Record, first shot |
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Time until first shot is captured, from "instant review" mode. Quite fast.
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| Record to play (max/min res) |
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Very fast.
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| Shutter lag, full autofocus |
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A bit faster than average, an improvement over the C2020 Zoom. |
| Shutter lag, manual focus |
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About average |
| Shutter lag, prefocus |
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Quite a bit faster than average.
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| Cycle Time, max/min resolution |
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Faster than average. Max res gives this speed for three shots, min res lets you shoot this fast until the card is full. |
| Cycle time, continuous mode |
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Pretty fast, no buffer memory limit. (Shoot until the card is full.) |
Overall, the C-2040 was quite fast in our testing. Shutter lag has been improved over that of the C-2020 Zoom, and is now shorter than average among cameras we've tested. At only 0.1 seconds, shutter lag in prefocus mode (with the camera prefocused prior to the exposure itself, by half-pressing the shutter button) is much faster than average. Cycle time is also quite fast: A buffer memory provides maximum-speed shooting for up to three frames at maximum resolution, and unlimited capture (up to the memory card capacity) at minimum resolution.
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