Fast digital P&S ? any ?

[_goodtimez]

I have a friend and work colleague telling me she's always missing action pitcures from her kids with her camera. She has a Sony DSC-W70.
She asked me if I knew a camera with a fast reaction time (short shutter lag).
I looked here and there but I can't really find consistent information.
Has any of you got a good experience with a fast P&S ?

 

[jsrockit]

I would imagine your friend wants a zoom right (most consumers don't want a fixed lens, especially a 28mm)?

The Canon S95 and Olympus XZ-1 were ok... as long as you did the pre-focus part. Perhaps she should try that method with her Sony? Sometimes I see people with their finger two inches above the shutter button and then they stab at the shutter button. It that scenario, you'd have to account for AF lag, technique lag, and shutter lag). It's most likely AF lag.

 

[_goodtimez]

Thanks. I'm having a meeting with her and the camera tomorrow.
We'll see how she uses it.
In any case I'm now tasked (by myself) to explain her the various functions.

 

[Archiver]

The Canon S95 and Olympus XZ-1 were ok... as long as you did the pre-focus part. Perhaps she should try that method with her Sony? Sometimes I see people with their finger two inches above the shutter button and then they stab at the shutter button. It that scenario, you'd have to account for AF lag, technique lag, and shutter lag). It's most likely AF lag.

That's a really good point. The number of people I have seen who do the hover-stab is amazing. They wonder why their images are blurry, and then they try to stab faster and harder to make them still!

The Canon S90 has a surprisingly fast focus and shoot time, as does the Canon G10. I imagine that their descendants are just as fast, possibly faster.

 

[Adanac]

Are there any point and shoots that have pre-focus / focus lock capability? Cut that out, cut out much or most of the lag. With manual focus lenses and shooting kids, zone focus and aperture were our friends, now we have AFL (and aperture).

Failing that she can spend $1200 on a Fuji X100 which, with pre-focus/focus lock, will do the job just fine and then some.

 

[DamenS]

Just about any compact camera which can manual focus or (like the Ricoh GRD series, have a "pre-focus point" set). The actual "shutter lag" will still be a little worse than a professional DSLR, but we are talking in the range of 10's of milliseconds - it is their slow contrast detect AF which is the main delay.

 

[aad]

Panasonic LX5 has focus lock, which is great, plus a "Manual Focus" and Zoom" lens-resume feature, that allows the camera to return to a preset distance on power-up for zoom and/or focus.

This feature also will send the focus to that preset distance whenever it is switched from auto to manual focus.

This is why I bought the camera, and using these features, the shutter lag is zero, as faras I can tell.

 

[matthewm]

I have two thoughts on this:

1. I agree with the others about her technique. I'm not saying this in a bad way, but moms tend to have the hover/technique built into their mom-brains. When I worked at Ritz Camera (please don't throw anything) I used to get people trying to return cameras constantly because they said they were slow or that they missed all the shots or the images were blurry. If I took a moment to show them that they can hold the shutter button down halfway while their kid is at bat and then finish the shutter press right as they were swinging, they'd get a lot more keepers. Boom. Done. I think if you teach her this, she'll get a higher keeper rate and probably find that the little Sony is fine.

2. Right off the bat, people are mentioning Ricoh (not a good camera for people who want snapshots of their kids), Canon S95, G10, etc. If she's going to spend $400-500 on a high-end point and shoot, she'd be better off buying an inexpensive DSLR (Canon has a refurbished XS kit for $400). The DSLR will outperform any point and shoot (especially an older one) in terms of speed of focus/shutter lag. I think the whole pre-focus or setting it to f/8 and 5m is not what she will be looking for and would probably just confuse her, especially if her camera doesn't have the capability.

I'd say teach her to half-press BEFORE the moment and finish the press as the moment happens. Or sell her on an inexpensive DSLR with kit lens.

 

[_goodtimez]

I have two thoughts on this:

1. I agree with the others about her technique. I'm not saying this in a bad way, but moms tend to have the hover/technique built into their mom-brains. When I worked at Ritz Camera (please don't throw anything) I used to get people trying to return cameras constantly because they said they were slow or that they missed all the shots or the images were blurry. If I took a moment to show them that they can hold the shutter button down halfway while their kid is at bat and then finish the shutter press right as they were swinging, they'd get a lot more keepers. Boom. Done. I think if you teach her this, she'll get a higher keeper rate and probably find that the little Sony is fine.

2. Right off the bat, people are mentioning Ricoh (not a good camera for people who want snapshots of their kids), Canon S95, G10, etc. If she's going to spend $400-500 on a high-end point and shoot, she'd be better off buying an inexpensive DSLR (Canon has a refurbished XS kit for $400). The DSLR will outperform any point and shoot (especially an older one) in terms of speed of focus/shutter lag. I think the whole pre-focus or setting it to f/8 and 5m is not what she will be looking for and would probably just confuse her, especially if her camera doesn't have the capability.

I'd say teach her to half-press BEFORE the moment and finish the press as the moment happens. Or sell her on an inexpensive DSLR with kit lens.

Roland,

I had a meeting with my friend this morning and the half-press thing is exactly what I teached her.
She is a good mom and I also took a chance to show her what a real camera is 🙂
I took an old Pentax SV and showed her the principle of EVs and the relation between film iso, aperture and speed. I think she got it. She trained a bit on the half press and she's going to try the coming week end with her kids.
She is lurking on a Nikon P7000, not a bad camera I think.
We'll see, maybe she will become a member of our photoclub at work.
Thanks to all of you for your positive moves.