Pentax Optio S4: Shutter Lag: Fast SD Card

On 20 Feb 2007 10:40:03 -0800, denis RemoveThis @boisclair.freeserve.co.uk wrote:

>My wife has a Pentax Optio S4 ultra compact camera which has
>significany shutter lag.
>
>Would using a fast SD card help with thios problem - or would the
>camera not be able to respond to the faster write speed possible with
>such a card?
>
>Denis Boisclair
>Cheshire, UK.


It's the camera. I haven't found any of the smaller cameras that don't
have lots of shutter lag. I've tried several with "fast" flash cards,
SD abd CF, to no avail.
 >> Stay informed about: Pentax Optio S4: Shutter Lag: Fast SD Card 

denis.RemoveThis@boisclair.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
> My wife has a Pentax Optio S4 ultra compact camera which has
> significany shutter lag.
>
> Would using a fast SD card help with thios problem - or would the
> camera not be able to respond to the faster write speed possible with
> such a card?

It will have no effect at all on real shutter lag. If you're taking a
series of pictures as fast as the camera can manage, it will eventually
become a factor (if the camera is capable of using the speed of the
faster card), once the buffer is filled up. Most compacts have tiny
buffers, just a shot or two, but I dunno about that one.
 >> Stay informed about: Pentax Optio S4: Shutter Lag: Fast SD Card 

Oliver Costich wrote:

> It's the camera. I haven't found any of the smaller cameras that don't
> have lots of shutter lag. I've tried several with "fast" flash cards,
> SD abd CF, to no avail.

The Fuji f10, f11, and presumably f30 have very low shutter lag. But
they focus slowly, still, especially in low light (all P&S focus slowly
because they're using contrast information from the sensor chip, rather
than a separate phase-detector as in DSLRs). You need to learn to work
with your camera; this nearly always means pre-focusing. You can then
get the actual shot much faster (depending on the camera). For the F30
the shutter lag is very short, about 100 milliseconds. The focus time
is much longer, .3-.7 seconds it says at dpreview (but at least for my
F11, in bad conditions it can be much worse than that)
 >> Stay informed about: Pentax Optio S4: Shutter Lag: Fast SD Card 

Oliver Costich wrote:
> On 20 Feb 2007 10:40:03 -0800, denis DeleteThis @boisclair.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
>
>> My wife has a Pentax Optio S4 ultra compact camera which has
>> significany shutter lag.
>>
>> Would using a fast SD card help with thios problem - or would the
>> camera not be able to respond to the faster write speed possible with
>> such a card?
>>
>> Denis Boisclair
>> Cheshire, UK.
>
>
> It's the camera. I haven't found any of the smaller cameras that don't
> have lots of shutter lag. I've tried several with "fast" flash cards,
> SD abd CF, to no avail.

It doesn't have much to do with the speed of the flash card unless
you're in continuous shoot mode. The first shot is dependent only on the
camera and for more than one shot there's an internal buffer. If you use
flash then add that recycle time.
Dave Cohen
 >> Stay informed about: Pentax Optio S4: Shutter Lag: Fast SD Card 

Many thanks to everyone for their fast and helpful replies - pre
focusing looks like the ONLY answer.

Denis Boisclair
Cheshire, UK.
 >> Stay informed about: Pentax Optio S4: Shutter Lag: Fast SD Card