Olympus C-730 Ultra Zoom

Shutter Lag/Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a delay or 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 one millisecond.)

The C-730 is an average to slightly slower than average 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 slightly over 2 seconds, not bad, but not a category-leading performance either. It has a decent-sized buffer memory though, helpful for grabbing relatively large numbers of shots in rapid sequence. Autofocus speed is about average, although better than that of the C-720, and not bad compared to some other long-zoom cameras. Continuous shooting mode is a bit slower than average at roughly 1.2 frames/second. All in all, not terribly slow, but a faster shutter response could have made this an excellent camera for sports shooting, with its long zoom able to reach out to capture distant action. 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-730 gives great long-zoom performance at a bargain price.