Maybe it's just me but does anyone else who owns a S40 feel that it takes forever for the camera to cycle between shots?
It's getting frustrating especially with the LCD going blank while either the picture is processed or the flash recharges.
The camera takes nice pictures but you definately have to have patience.
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542 Answers
Re: Pentax S40 Lag Time
It's definitely painful. I set my camera to default to no-flash because of the extra time it takes to recharge the flash. It may be because Pentax allows the use of alkaline batteries, so they've made the peak power usage lower by processing the picture, writing to the card, and recharging the flash sequentially, rather than doing the flash recharging in parallel which would speed up things *alot*. Maybe they can add a Lithium/NiMH mode that would help speed things up?!?
I've done some adhoc testing with my new panasonic 10mb/s SD card versus a plain jane Sandisk 2mb/s card and from what I can tell, there's less than 1 sec difference between the two cards in cycle times. So taking pictures with a faster card won't help the cycle time enough to really matter... even without the flash activated. With flash it doesn't matter at all. It may affect movie mode, but I haven't tested that yet.
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This is a common situation with many compact point&shoot cameras. Larger and more expensive dSLRs have additional hardware that eliminates this "shutter lag".
You can eliminate much of the lag by anticipating the peak of the action. Press the shutter release button halfway to focus and meter, and hold it there until the moment, then press the shutter release button the rest of the way.
This is a common situation with many compact point&shoot cameras. This is because before the camera can take the picture it must focus, meter the light to set the exposure, and more. Bigger, more expensive cameras have more hardware to help eliminate this "shutter lag."
You can anticipate the action. Press the shutter button halfway to focus and meter. Hold the shutter button there until the peak of the action and then press it the rest of the way. This will eliminate much of the shutter lag.
If you read the reviews on A10 it has something like 1.73 seconds shutter lag, which is very slow to some other cameras with only 0.3 shutter lag. Redeuce the pixels to 6mb. Also a weak battery and maybe a under performing m.card add to your camera seem to be slower usual. jam
I'm an early adopter of this camera precisely because of the features you listed. I also have some travel coming up and I need a decent point-and-shoot where charging batteries will be difficult.
I have a gallery of some pics that I took within the first couple of days here:
http://www.pbase.com/cryptodigm/misc
These have all been resampled for storage space, and I'm not much of a photographer. I just wanted to take some pictures with the sample settings. If you'd like any originals for comparison, I can post those for you.
I only notice the delay between pictures when using the artistic effects or when taking movies. Otherwise it's been 1-3 seconds for me. Not great, but not too horrible. I haven't tried the rapid shot mode yet, but these compact Pentax cameras aren't known for their ability to take action shots.
My biggest gripe so far is batteries. The battery life indicator is often wrong (full one shot, empty the next). Ad on cheap AAs, it gets about 30-40 shots before they need to be replaced. I'm going to buy a rechargeable CRV3 battery to see if it helps at all.
Also, since it is a compact camera there is *some* barreling when taking close pictures, but it's not as bad as the S4i pictures that I've seen.
I think the first couple of pics gets a blurry corner, and it is quite noticeable.. I hear that it was a problem with some Optio cam but not all. Maybe you could check with Pentax for a replace ? I know it quite anoying but it deserves a serious investigation.
And btw, thank you for the samples, great pics. I would be really interested in seeing full size (origianl) images and some portraits. Can you post some on pbase.com ? They have 10 MEGS accounts for free.
It's about the time it takes to lift the camera to the eye. I have no figure to give you. A tip though: Levae the camera on. After a few minutes it turn itself to a wait status (the delay can be set in the menu). Then you save power. When the next pcture opportunity is seen just lift the camera to the eye, halfpress the shutter button and you are on the go again.
I haven't seen a single complaint here about the startup time amd would say it is a non issue.
It's about the time it takes to lift the camera to the eye. I have no figure to give you. A tip though: Levae the camera on. After a few minutes it turn itself to a wait status (the delay can be set in the menu). Then you save power. When the next pcture opportunity is seen just lift the camera to the eye, halfpress the shutter button and you are on the go again.
I haven't seen a single complaint here about the startup time amd would say it is a non issue.
I don't know what your measurement conditions were, but there's no way the shutter lag after focus is 1/2 second. I don't have a quantitative number at my finger tips, but it surely falls into the "instantaneous" category, as far as I can tell. I've taken plenty of action shots and candids, including shots of flying birds, that will back that up
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