Sony MVC-CD350

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 an Imaging Resource proprietary test system.

NOTE: My qualitative characterizations of camera performance below (that is, "reasonably fast," "about average," etc.) are meant to be relative to other cameras of similar price and general capabilities. Thus, the same shutter lag that's "very fast" for a low-end consumer camera might be characterized as "quite slow" if I encountered it on a professional model. The comments are also intended as only a quick reference: If performance specs are critical for you, rely on the absolute numbers to compare cameras, rather than my purely qualitative comments.

Shutter lag on the CD350 is among the very best of any camera I've tested, an amazing 0.33 seconds with the lens set to its wide-angle position. Even at telephoto, the CD350's autofocus is faster than that of most cameras with the lens set to wide-angle. Manual focus speed is a bit faster than average, but prefocus time is blazing. (Great for sports.)

Cycle times are quite good also, and the CD350 has a 6-frame buffer for shots in large/fine mode. It's odd though, that the camera can only grab two frames in succession in continuous mode. (Which Sony calls "Burst 2.")

Like other models in the Mavica series, the CD350 starts up from power-off fairly slowly, because the camera has to check the disc to see how much space is left, and where the next image should be stored. The camera obviously has a trick or two up its sleeve in this area although: If you load a new disc (or just open and shut the back door with the power off), the camera somehow knows it has to scan the entire disc to determine space and where the next picture will go. This takes 22 seconds. If you just shut the CD350 down without removing the disc although, the next time it starts up, it seems to recognized the disc, and startup time is reduced to only 2.4 seconds. Shutdown time is about average, unless the camera is in the process of writing to the CD, in which case, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute for the camera to fully shut down after you hit the power switch..

Other than the long startup and record-to-playback times, the CD350 is a surprisingly responsive camera: In fact, it has about the fastest shutter response of any consumer-level camera I've tested to date.