Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

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, I now routinely measure it with a custom test system I constructed for the purpose. (With crystal-controlled timing, accurate to 0.01% and with a timing resolution of 1 millisecond.)

Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom Timings
Operation	Time (secs)	Notes
Power On -> First shot	8.11	Camera has to extend lens first. Rather slow.
Shutdown	5.81	Time to retract camera lens. Also rather slow.
Play to Record, first shot	0.99	Time until first shot is captured. Quite fast.
Record to play	1.57	Time to display a large/fine file after capture. Pretty fast.
Shutter lag, full autofocus	1.29/1.45	First number is for wide-angle, second is for telephoto. On the slow side across the general range of digicams, even a bit slow for long-zoom models. (3x zoom cameras tend to run 0.8-1.0 seconds, long zoom models 0.95-1.4.)
Shutter lag, prefocus	0.21	Time to capture, after half-pressing Shutter button. Faster than average. (Average is 0.3 seconds.)
Cycle Time, max/min resolution	3.2/2.8	First number is for large/fine files, second number is time for small/basic images. Rather slow by current standards - Oddly, the C-720's buffer memory doesn't seem to make much difference at all in single-shot mode.
Cycle Time, continuous mode, max/min resolution	0.9-0.67 0.77-0.67	First numbers are for large/fine files, second number is time for small/basic images. For some reason the interval between the first two shots in a series is greater than for subsequent ones. In large/fine mode, there's an 0.9 second delay between first and second shots, then others follow every 0.67 seconds. You get 4 shots before having to wait for the buffer to clear in large/fine mode, then need to wait about 11 seconds before you can capture the next series of 4. With the small/basic quality setting though, you can get over 100 images in a series, at the 0.67 interval. (That's a frame rate of 1.47 frames/second.)
Cycle Time, TIFF images	3.1/37.7	The C-720 can capture up to three TIFF images at intervals of 3.1 seconds, then it takes 37.7 seconds for the buffer to clear.

The C-720 is an average to somewhat slow camera overall. Startup and shutdown are a little leisurely, as the telescoping lens mechanism is rather deliberate in its motions. Shot to shot time is 3.3 seconds or so, despite a fairly good-sized buffer memory. (This isn't a terrible time, but it isn't an industry-leading one either.) Autofocus speed is also a little slow, even when compared to other long-zoom cameras. - This results in a shutter lag that ranges from 1.29 to 1.45 seconds. Continuous shooting mode does pretty well, with a frame rate of 1.47 frames/second, up to the limit of the 4-frame buffer. All in all, not terribly slow, but a faster shutter response could have made this an excellent camera for sports shooting. As it is, unless you can prefocus the camera in advance of the action, you'd have a hard time capturing critical moments. (On the other hand, if you're dealing with subjects where shutter lag isn't that important, the C-720 gives great long-zoom performance at a bargain price.)