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R shutter lag?


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I've been using a Minolta XD11 lately. It's a great camera except for

the really long shutter lag. There is quite a delay as the lens stops

down before the shutter fires. The earlier R bodies are basically the

same body, I understand. Does the R4, for example, have a long

shutter lag?

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It would never occur to me to say that my R5 has any sort of lag, shutter or otherwise. Nor my R4, when I had one.

 

This brings me to my R6. I always felt it was a bit slow to respond. Not neccessarily the shutter, just the whole contraption. The picture didn't happen for a split second after pressing the button. Maybe 1/4 or 1/5 second.

 

Recently I happened to attached my motor drive R to the R6. The R6 became a whole new camera. When firing from the motor drive button, the shot fired off instantaneously. Totally responsive. I imagine that the motor provided the energy, evidently lacking in the camera's springs, to move the mechanism through its paces quickly.

 

So that's what I have to contribute about this.

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My experience is mostly with the R4s, R4sP and various species

of Leicaflex. I've seen a big variation in lag on the R4xx bodies; in

one case I could watch through the viewfinder for an

interminable length of time while the lens stopped down, the

mirror rose and the shutter fired. A CLA made this camera much

more responsive.

<P>

Even with a freshly-serviced R4xx the shutter lag was perceptibly

longer than on any of the Leicaflexes.

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I actually owned a brace of XD-11s at one point. Not a bad camera. While I was shopping for them, I ran across one sample in particular that had an extremely long delay between pressing the shutter and the actual firing. Turns out that it needed a CLA and solenoid replacement.
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The R4's shutter lag time is just average. Not being scientific, if you try the other brands' flag ship models, like the Canon 1v, Nikon F3, F5, Contax RTS3, Minolta 9, you will be pleasantly surprised by how fast their mirrors and shutters move. With theses cameras, all the flaps and actions will have come to a stop by the time you fully depress the shutter. By comparison, the R8 is noticeably better but still lags behind the other brands' top models.

 

The mirror is only part of the problem because even some rangefinder cameras like the Konica RF and the Contax G1 has average shutter lag.

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Any camera with focal plane shutter has much more shutter lag than

camera with leave shutter, because exposure will not be complete until

a slit has travel across the film plane. Horizontal traveling focal plane shutter even worst<p>

 

Example of null delay cameas: Rolleiflex TLR, Rollei 35/35s, Minox IIIs/B/C etc.

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