Seizing the moment in digital photography

Capturing soccer kicks and diving catches: there are ways to defeat the shutter lag that can mar action shots.
The New York Times

The story "Seizing the moment in digital photography" published May 10, 2007 at 7:23 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[hkraus]

Casio rules in this area

I've been using a Casio EX-Z750 for almost two years now, and one of the primary criteria for me was shutter lag. This pocket camera had a startup time of about 1 second, and shutter lag of 2/10 of a second!<br />It also had by far the easiest menu system to use, the most preset choices, and a review speed that dwarfs the most expensive SLRs (I use a very high-end Digital SLR from Canon also). Great battery life, sharp images, good color,lots of manual controls, MPEG4 movies (not the giant MJPEG Canon/Nikon use), big LCD review screen, etc, etc.<br /><br />Unfortunately, just about none of the "experts" doing camera reviews know much about the technical issues, and the camera stores and camera magazines cater to the big advertisers and vendors, meaning Canon and Nikon get all the attention, even though they almost always have very inferior technology (in pocket cameras).<br /><br />Computer mags focus on the low-end stuff, like HP, because it comes from PC vendors they are familiar with.<br /><br />Check out this review as an example of how shutter lag can be quantified:<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioz750/page4.asp" target="_newWindow">http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioz750/page4.asp</a><br /><br />This site does mostly good reviews, but they are so detailed they put off the average pocket camera user, and sometimes they miss the mark in certain areas. Generally speaking though they offer a lot of good information.<br /><br />I would say though, that I'm not thrilled with the current crop of Casio's, but haven't had time to check out the current Canon/Nikon stuff lately either.<br /><br />I'm leaning towards a wide-angle capability in a pocket camera, but am not willing to give up everything else to get it.