Help on full-press digital speed to shoot. I need more SPEEEED, scotty!

Well, i tried a Fuji F30 based on some recommendations here. It was small and

light. It had one of the fastest rated shutter lags (little did I know about

the demons of focus lag).

 

I opened it up, pointed it, pressed the button halfway....

 

focus

 

focus

 

focus

 

Click.

 

about 1.5 seconds later it was ready to shoot. Wow--that reduction of 0.03

seconds in shutter lage sure helped!

 

 

So, let me rephrase my question and give a baseline: I want a digital camera

that will focus AND SHOOT as fast (or faster!) than my Olympus Stylus Epic.

Which is to say it doesn't need to be an SLR. It just has to be able to shoot

quickly.

 

**as measured from the time I touch the shutter to the time the shutter trips.

No prefocus!**

 

I'm willing to give up size within reason--I don't want an SLR but I don't need

a credit card camera.

 

What should I look into next?

My Canon 20D is fast, with a USM lens. Focus lag with a Canon A620 is also pretty fast. I don't know about too many other cameras, but I know what you mean by slow = frustrating.

Erik,

 

There is NO Point and Shoot camera that is fast enough, then, for what you want it to do.

 

Just this Labor Day, I took my Fuji F10 to a carnival environment and tried to take photos of my grand-children on these fast moving rides with absolutely little luck. I was lucky to get 10% of the photos that I wanted. I was hoping that the F10 would be fast enough, but like you I found out, I was taking photos of kids a swing or two behind my grand-kids (about 1.5 seconds late).

 

So, next year, I'll be taking my Canon 20d, like I did last year. The 20d did a fine job in the daylight with a reasonably fast lens and the ISO set to 400 or 800.

 

I hope this helps.

 

//Chuck

Erik,

 

I don't own an F30. My camera has 5 focus modes, two of which have the label 'high speed'. Perhaps the Fuji has options that would speed things up.

 

You may face frustration finding a "fast (or faster!)" shooting digicam. I wish it weren't so, too.

 

Good Luck,

 

Don E

Sigh. Thanks for the responses, depressing though they are ;)

 

I deliberately chose my Stylus Epic as a baseline because--sheesh--it's an eighty buck camera!

 

What am I missing? Why is it so hard to find a quick-focusing digital when my Epic (and Minilux, and GR1, and...) focus quickly?

Your Olympus Stylus Epic has a focusing system that operates on a relatively restricted

number of steps and through an independent focusing sensor system. AF SLRs and DSLRs

operate this way as well. That's why focusing is generally fairly quick (although I bet a top

flight AF SLR/DSLR will have better shutter response than your Epic by a long shot... I have

one of them and always thought it was kind of pokey in terms of focusing lag). These

cameras then have a very simple sequence of operations to perform to release the shutter

... on the Stylus, once the focus is set, the exposure is already set and it just releases the

shutter. <br>

<br>

Compact digicams work in a different way which is much more complex. They use contrast

comparison reading an image off the capture sensor operating in real time mode to

perform autofocus, typically with a greater number of focusing steps to drive the lens. To

enable this, the focusing/framing mode of the sensor is real time capture ... this is what

the camera does when you start to press the shutter release:<br>

<br>

- start the focusing sequence, rack the lens back and forth until the optimum focus is

found and locked<br>

- evaluate and set an exposure according to the built in program curve (which might

include adjusting ISO)<br>

- once ready, close the shutter, set the aperture to the taking position<br>

- flush the sensor's capture buffer, change mode on the sensor to timed capture<br>

- release the shutter <br>

<br>

While the speed of all this work has been improved a lot in recent years, it's still a lot of

work to be performed by relatively slow, inexpensive control logic. <br>

<br>

The Fuji F30 you mention (I have one) in Auto-M mode has a setting called "High Speed

Shooting". With this mode turned on, the camera's program favors smaller apertures for

more DoF and is less critical about obtaining absolute focusing accuracy. In a quick test, it

speeds up shot-to-shot maximum performance by about a factor of 2, which makes it just

about as responsive as my Stylus Epic is. <br>

<br>

Godfrey<br>

Hello Erik, I'm not aware of a point and shoot that has very fast start up and shoot. My old Fuji took ages. On the other hand, my 20D has millisecond start up and has very rapid focus. I expect most recent DSLRs would be that fast.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Pete

As I see it there are two ways you can go.

 

The cheap way is to get a fixed focus camera, and hope that the shutter lag is small. The expensive way is to use a SLR with an expensive (ring USM / AFS HSM etc) lens.

If you buy, a 350d or 400d, you dont need to buy an expensive lens to focus really fast, If speed is what you want, the kit lens focuses really fast already.

 

On a good lighting condition, you just need to point and fully press the shutter button, and the 350d with kit, instantly shoots.

Another option, if you can live without autofocus. Buy a Pentax digital SLR (inexpensive and

small as dSLRs go) and use it with a manual focus "A" series lens. No appreciable shutter lag.

"Focus lag" is determined by you. Lens will talk properly with the camera, so there are no

metering issues, and you can use it in aperture-priority, shutter-prority and auto-everything

modes. Might not suit your needs, of course ... it depends what you like to photograph. But

for many classes of moving target (children come to mind) autofocus is not that much of an

advantage over manual focus. And slow, hopeless autofocus (as you understand) is a definite

disadavantage.

With regard to the Pentax solution, you can buy any A/F/FA/DA series lens and turn off

autofocus just as easily. No need to buy only manual focus A series lenses. I use manual

focus regularly with all my lenses, which are all Pentax autofocus series now.

 

Godfrey

A good point Godfrey. I was just thinking about making the set-up as small and light as

possible. Perhaps I'm being a Luddite ...

 

Richard

I don't know about the Fuji but my A620 has a manual focus setting which gives you the option of setting a fairly small aperture for good DOF, light allowing, in aperture priority mode and manually focusing the lens for a hyperfocal distance to suit your subject. You will get photos that will be a bit off the focus range now and then but it works generally! Film shooters do this all the time for these type of situations.

Did you experiment with the focus settings? The camera offers a high speed focus mode, and also a choice of AF area modes (I suspect centre will be the fastest). Of course, if it had a "snap" mode as offered on several Ricohs, you would be even better off.

I was fooling with a Panasonic FZ-7 in the store, and the biggest thing that impressed me was the focus speed. Seemed way faster than my FZ-20, which is reasonably fast for a P&S type. Probably can't compete with a dSLR though I bet it was on the order of a few hundred milliseconds, rather than 1 sec plus.

<blockquote><i>

Richard Kingston , sep 08, 2006; 06:50 p.m.

Another option, if you can live without autofocus. Buy a Pentax digital SLR (inexpensive and small as dSLRs go) and use it with a manual focus "A" series lens.</i></blockquote>

<p>I agree 100%.</p>

<p>And yes (to answer someone else), you can manually focus with the kit lens too - but the focus ring, let's face it, isn't all that grand in terms of feel with the kit lens. Nothing quite like turning the focus ring on a metal lens that was designed to focus that way. The even-older M42 SMC Takumars were like <b>buttah.</b> Makes me want to go fondle one right now.</p>

These little Fuji cameras focus on contrast, which is highly subject-dependent. I have an F10, which is very fast by my perception - much faster than any other P&S digital I've used (The Nikon 5xxx cameras are terrible). P&S cameras are getting better, but the F10-F30 are among the best.

 

Technique is important. If you gain focus and exposure with an half-press of the shutter, the camera is ready for action and is very fast to respond at the decisive moment. The focusing area must see contrast in the subject, such as edges or patterns, to react. If you try to focus on a plain area, concrete, sky, smooth cloth), 1.5 seconds might seem short to you. The method of "point, press and compose" works with P&S and DSLRs alike.

 

If you want consistently fast focusing, you will need a DSLR. Focusing is faster (using phase detection rather than the P&S style of contrast detection). Lenses respond more quickly and the image processing is faster. Some DSLRs are better than others. The Nikon D100 was glacial compared to the D1 and D2 cameras.

A Ricoh Caplio GX8 is fast to focus and shoot. About .12 secs in decent light, slower (.5) in dim light.

 

I don't know what you think is so fast about a Stylus Epic, it has plenty of shutter lag, and the Yashica T4 was worse yet. From what I remember of my Epic, unlike the majority of digicams, the Stylus Epic calculates the focus at the half press, but doesn't move the lens to the focus point until you fully press the shutter, and this results in considerable actual shutter lag, whereas by pre focussing a digicam when you press the shutter the rest of the way, you've got nearly instantaneous response on most of the current cameras.

 

The Ricoh mentioned above also has the Snap focus, a fixed focus preset like the GR-1 did to eliminate focus lag by setting the focus at 2.5meters. You can set up many of the newer digicams to provide the same function, probably the F30 too.

I don't think the Epic is especially fast. But nonetheless, it consistently beats my mother's supposedly "fast" digicam, and also the f30. I was using the epic to make it more of a 'fair fight' (or so I thought).

 

Edward and others: I know about prefocus. I use it whenever I can--which is far from "always"--on my stylus and g2. Hell, I even use it on my F3. But please, please believe me when I say that THIS camera can't require the constant use of prefocus, or my wife won't use it.

 

For 80% of my shooting, I'd much rather have a 1/4 second time from shutter press to shutter trip, than a 1 second prefocus and a 0.08 second shutter speed.

 

I don't really want to prefocus, nor to get an SLR. (in my defense, i DID say that...) At least not at this point.

 

Though I have to admit I like the "small slr and use manual" idea. Hell, I could RANGE focus with my minox faster than this f30 could decide what to shoot. Still, those dslrs are pretty pricey.

 

Hmm.

 

This just seems like such an odd area for the manufacturers to drop the ball. If you took a camera like the f30, I would HAPPILY pay $50 extra (or more) and suck up additional size for fast focusing. On well.

 

;)

But the question(s) remain: have you experimented with any of the F30's other settings, in particular the "High-Speed Shooting" that Godfrey DiGiorgi mentioned?

 

I think there are plenty of digital point and shoots that are faster than the Stylus Epic, especially ones that provide the user with some manual control.

No, I returned it immediately. AFAIK all fast-focus settings have tradeoffs in other picture quality--whether it's a forced tiny aperture, or less focus accuracy, or... I'm not willing to accept that on a brand new, expensive, camera.

 

In particular I don't like doing that on the F30; its good low-light performance was one of the reasons I tried it, and if I were to give that up for focus speed I'd get a different camera entirely.

<<and if I were to give that up for focus speed I'd get a different camera entirely.>>

 

Where do you see that you would be giving this up?

Eric.

 

Manufacturers really have not dropped the ball as you put it. The cameras are getting better and better every year. It is a new technology, and takes time.

 

It's all a mute point anyway. What really makes digital point and shoots slow are compromises needed for video. And no video = small sales, and sales are hardly the thing a manufacturer can afford to drop to ball on. I know it may not seem it but the F30 is cheap as far as digital cameras go. It can only be as cheap as it is with sales volume.

<blockquote>

Rob Bernhard Photo.net Patron Prolific Poster, sep 12, 2006; 05:03 p.m.

 

Where do you see that you would be giving this up?

</blockquote>

<br>Because a tiny aperture is bad in low light and that is one of the prime ways to "improve" focus speed.

<br>

 

Jamie: The video may well explain it. I use DV for my video (quite happily, I might add) and for me at least i'd lose it in a heartbeat. Oh well. Perhaps I'll just wait a couple of years before I make the move.

<<a tiny aperture is bad in low light and that is one of the prime ways to "improve" focus speed>>

 

But isn't the advantage of the F30 its lower-noise high-ISO capabilities?

 

You still haven't addressed the issue of using any camera longer than 30 seconds before passing judgement. It seems to me that you're simply looking for reasons to bash. Each camera has a slightly different learning curve. Being unwilling to accept any learning curve dooms you to failure.