Zeiss Ikon's shutter lag?

[Frank Granovski]

So I guess no one knows what the lag is, eh? Anyway, I find it rather Ikonic that for the price of 1 M7 you can buy two and a half ZIs.

 

[ZeissFan]

actually about two ($3,300 vs. $1,617) ... what is the price of the M7 now? did the increases kick in?

 

[Frank Granovski]

Oh, I though the ZI was $1300 and something. Not sure if the price increase has kicked in yet, but this doesn't really matter.

 

[regit]

37 msec. following # should be msec.

50 or less, fast shutter.
80 or less, kinda fast shutter.
120 or slower, you feel the shutter lag.

F5, 47. EOS 1-V, 57. Contax RTS III, 60.
F100 62, EOS 3 59, Maxxum 7 85,
EOS 7 99. FM3A 48. Contax RX 99.
EOS 1v HS, 55. EOS RT 15.
N80 134, Contax Aria 159, Pentax MZ-S 122
Leica M2 26
Fuji one-time-use disposble 0

Believe it or not....

Thank you very much, that's the information I need and more for the report

 

[ZeissFan]

Adorama has the M7 body as $3,395 vs. $1,617 for the Zeiss Ikon. I think the M7 rose by $100. But you're right. At that price, $100 isn't that big of a difference.

 

[James Burton]

EOS 1v HS, 55. EOS RT 15.
N80 134, Contax Aria 159, Pentax MZ-S 122
Leica M2 26

Interesting. I don't understand how an SLR can ever approach an RF.
For an SLR there are 2 distinct physical actions
- mirror flip up + damping and aperture shutdown (can be simultaneous)
- trigger 1st curtain

No matter how fast you make the mirror, it's the damping that would be the limiting factor in my miniscule imagination. By damping I mean wait for whatever stops the mirror, to absorb the impact.

Any real engineers out there care to elaborate?

In practice, my EOS-30 has negligible shutter delay (ignoring auto-focus as always). But I always expected shutter-only cameras to be measurably faster.
Like an order of magnitude.



Thanks,
James

 

[Bertram2]

Interesting. I don't understand how an SLR can ever approach an RF.
James

Nobody has asked until now what the lag definition shall be for this comparison ??
I think this discussion suffers from the problem that everybody works with his personally assumpted definition ?

In my definition this lag is the the time from releasing the shutter (excluded button travel to the point of release !) until the first curtain begin to run !?

So I guess too how an SLR can be compared at all with the RF , which has not to wait for the mirror ?

Maybe the mechnical Copal shutters have a larger lag than the cloth shutters because they gave to give the protection blind a little advance before they can start.

But again: What is meant as lag here ?

bertram

 

[Taipei-metro]

Interesting. I don't understand how an SLR can ever approach an RF.
For an SLR there are 2 distinct physical actions
- mirror flip up + damping and aperture shutdown (can be simultaneous)
- trigger 1st curtain

No matter how fast you make the mirror, it's the damping that would be the limiting factor in my miniscule imagination. By damping I mean wait for whatever stops the mirror, to absorb the impact.

Any real engineers out there care to elaborate?

In practice, my EOS-30 has negligible shutter delay (ignoring auto-focus as always). But I always expected shutter-only cameras to be measurably faster.
Like an order of magnitude.

Eos RT (Real time) has a fixed pellicle mirror so no movement on the mirror part, of course a bit dim viewfinder is the side effect.
Canon claimmed 0.008 sec to take a picture (shutter curtain to open and closed time) when shutter's half pressed. so 15 msec. on a production RT without pre-pressed shutter is not too far off.
Eos have many models, even different model names in Japan, US and Europe for the same camera, I don't know Eos 30, tell me the specs and what year model or your purchase date( if bought new), maybe I can check the shutter lag time for you.
If it's a Canon Rebel 300, it's 128 msec. Rebel X, G, G-II, 2000, 3000, all hovering around 125-135msec. which are not too bad for lower end cameras.
Elan II(Eos 55) is 105msec.
My Elan 7 is 99ms, a lot faster than N80's 134msec.

 

[Taipei-metro]

Interesting. I don't understand how an SLR can ever approach an RF.
For an SLR there are 2 distinct physical actions
- mirror flip up + damping and aperture shutdown (can be simultaneous)
- trigger 1st curtain

No matter how fast you make the mirror, it's the damping that would be the limiting factor in my miniscule imagination. By damping I mean wait for whatever stops the mirror, to absorb the impact.

Any real engineers out there care to elaborate?

In practice, my EOS-30 has negligible shutter delay (ignoring auto-focus as always). But I always expected shutter-only cameras to be measurably faster.
Like an order of magnitude.




50mm 1.4, set at 1.4, shutter set at 1/250, manual focus.
Sensor 1, wired shutter button to computer.
Sensor 2, wired 24x36mm film plain to computer.
Hit the shutter w wired remote at 12:00 hour, if the sensor 2 sense the light hitting it at 13:00 hour, that means the shutter time lag is 3,600 sec.

Mileage may vary depending on your driving habbit.
The most expensive Contax RTS-III ( retail $3,300) can not beat the RF camera.
And the winner is, the disposable camera.

 

[James Burton]

Eos RT (Real time) has a fixed pellicle mirror so no movement on the mirror part, of course a bit dim viewfinder is the side effect.

DOH! Well that explains away that little anomaly (my ignorance of course).

I don't know Eos 30, tell me the specs and what year model or your purchase date( if bought new), maybe I can check the shutter lag time for you.
If it's a Canon Rebel 300, it's 128 msec.

I have an EOS-300 as well, but don't use it for fast photography.

My Elan 7 is 99ms, a lot faster than N80's 134msec.

That's the one. I think it's Elan 7e actually, the Elan 7 == EOS 33, I think...
Why do they do this to us?

Epson 2200 == Epson 2000

Bah!!!


James (seriously perturbed, perturbed seriously).

 

[James Burton]

Mileage may vary depending on your driving habbit.
The most expensive Contax RTS-III ( retail $3,300) can not beat the RF camera.
And the winner is, the disposable camera.

So the '0' means it completed in the same time granule that it started.

How are you detecting pressing the shutter, put a pressure button on top of the shutter button? That might detect initial pressure in one camera and final in the next.
A stiff shutter button would appears to be slower than a soft button.

Hmmm

James

 

[James Burton]

Nobody has asked until now what the lag definition shall be for this comparison ??
I think this discussion suffers from the problem that everybody works with his personally assumpted definition ?

In my definition this lag is the the time from releasing the shutter (excluded button travel to the point of release !) until the first curtain begin to run !?

That was my (hidden) question and my answer to it as well.

Thanks,
james

 

[Huck Finn]

Does anyone know the shutter lag of the Ikon?

I decided to e-mail Carl Zeiss AG with this question. They have tested for this & report shutter lag for the Zeiss Ikon at 14 ms (milli-seconds) in manual & 20 ms in AE.

To put this in some context. Leica reports shutter lag for the M6 TTL at 10-12 ms. Erwin Puts reports 12-18 ms for the M6 TTL. I imagine that there is more variability for such a performance feature in a mechanical camera. He reports 12 ms for the M7, making no distinction between manual & AE.

The Konica Hexar RF received some considerable abuse for its slow shutter response & its shutter lag was reportedly 120 ms, which is about that of the typical SLR. The Bessa R was tested at a slightly better 100 ms. Digi-cams have been reported in the range of 400-1500 ms although I don't know if recent designs are better in this regard.

Huck

 

[Way]

I think the shutter release of the ZI is done very well. In fact I almost like the feel better than my MP. For me, the amount of pressure and travel to release the shutter is just right and the moment of release is just right. Happens just when I expect it to happen and that, milli-seconds aside, is what matters most to me.

Way

 

[TEZillman]

For what it's worth, the following is from the Leica website with regard to the M7:

The shutter The unique cloth focal plane shutter of the Leica M is legendary.
While retaining all its advantages, it has now been completely redesigned in
order to incorporate the electronic control of the exposure times, which is
the foundation of the equally new automatic shutter speed control. Two
mechanically controlled shutter speeds of 1/60 second and 1/125 second
guarantee the functionality of the LEICA M7 even when the batteries are
dead. Furthermore, the shutter release cycle that was already extremely
quiet, fast and vibration-free in the preceding M6 model, has been retained.
The exposure delay amounts to a mere 25 milliseconds in spite of the electronic
control and thus it is nearly ten times faster than that of a conventional
autofocus single-lens-reflex camera.

 

[Huck Finn]

The exposure delay amounts to a mere 25 milliseconds in spite of the electronic control and thus it is nearly ten times faster than that of a conventional autofocus single-lens-reflex camera.

Thanks for posting this, TE. Good information. This is different from what Puts reports in his article, but then he differed a little from the Leica's shutter delay numbers in his review of the M6 TTL as well. There are tolerances which allow for variations, although a range of 12 - 25 ms would seem to be beyond that range. Still, either one would be very fast.

I wonder if this was a Leica typo. They say in your quote that "the shutter release cycle that was already extremely quiet, fast, and vibration-free in the previous M6 model, has been retained." Since they published 10-12 ms for the M6, 25 ms would represent a loss of speed, not "retaining" it. I have found another typo on their website, which they acknowledged when it was pointed out. Perhaps Puts got it right after all.

On the other hand, they do seem to suggest that the electronic control is an obstacle to be overcome in achieving rapid fire, so maybe it is slightly slower. Zeiss reports slower speed when AE is in use than when exposure is set manually. So, my final hypothesis is that Puts was reporting shutter lag with manual setting & that the website is reporting it with AE. In any case, the good news is that it's virtually instantaneous by any of these measures.

Huck

 

[SDK]

Human limitations and shutter lag.

Human limitations and shutter lag.

So little as to make no matter.

Shutterflower is exactly right here. Let's put this in a Biological perspective for a few milliseconds here. With short shutter lags exhibited by the Leica M series and the Zeiss Ikon, the photographic operator really is the limiting step in reacting to a decisive moment. I found a reference that quotes the measurement of the limit of human visual perception at 80 milliseconds. See http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/optics/colour.htm. So from the time zero that a photon strikes the retina to the time final that it's percieved by neurons in your visual cortex at the back of your brain, 80ms has elapsed. A lot of complex visual signal processing by various nerve cells happens in this 80ms. Then you have further delays of deciding to take a picture and sending a signal down the axons to the forearm muscle that contracts after a lag and controls your index finger to press the shutter release. I've no idea how to search for a reference to estimate the aggregate of these delays, but the time lag is probably significantly longer than 80ms more, even in the world's fastest photographer.

An example of the sluggishness of human visual perception is the flicker of TVs at 1/29.97 second or 33ms between fields (in North America) which cannot be perceived by the human eye. Movies run even slower 1/24 s or 41.7ms between frames, and also are perceived to be continuous in brightness, even though the image goes from black to bright frame 24 times per second.

So how much is a delay of 10, 12, 14 or even 25 ms on a camera's part going to matter? My guess is not much at all. It would be physically impossible to perceive the difference between the shutter lag of an M7-body and a ZI-body. Now it might make a slight difference in the image you capture with fast moving subjects, but you won't know that until the film is developed. So why worry unless you have another camera with a really long delay?

This being said, a shutter delay significantly longer than 80ms probably is perceptible, and that might cause anxiety over "lost moments". This happened to me a lot with slow AF point and shoot cameras (Yashica T4 and Ricoh GR1), so I gave up on them. I have a Hexar RF and find it's delay is just perceptible, but not annoying. I think the utility of 1/4000s top shutter speed makes that camera worth keeping.

So whether you have a ZI or an M, don't worry, shoot and be happy!

 

[Huck Finn]

Good stuff, SDK. Perhaps the delays through all these synapses make short shutter delay even more important, given all of the time that's been lost.

For me, this information is also just one more piece of evidence that this camera is built to the very highest standard.

Huck

 

[slinke]

Time lag

Time lag

Uh ... I timed it using Einstein's famously accurate one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two ... method. It came out to 15.63789441ms. That's
exactly equal to the time it takes our cat to race to its food bowl from a sleeping
position after it hears the first sound of catfood hit the bottom of the bowl. Also,
the shutter's sound is exactly the same as the slight "clink" of the piece of food
hitting the ceramic surface of the bowl.

 

[dr0]

Corrected lag times for Contax SLRs

Corrected lag times for Contax SLRs

37 msec. following # should be msec.

50 or less, fast shutter.
80 or less, kinda fast shutter.
120 or slower, you feel the shutter lag.

F5, 47. EOS 1-V, 57. Contax RTS III, 60.
F100 62, EOS 3 59, Maxxum 7 85,
EOS 7 99. FM3A 48. Contax RX 99.
EOS 1v HS, 55. EOS RT 15.
N80 134, Contax Aria 159, Pentax MZ-S 122
Leica M2 26
Fuji one-time-use disposble 0

Believe it or not....

I saved this information in a file from the Contax mailing list. I believe they are fairly definative (that is to say, those above for Contax are not correct). They are from someone using the German numbering, thus the , is the same as our .

The S2 is a mechanical shutter. I believe all others are electronic.


RX 68,8ms
Aria 54,0ms
ST 72,0ms
S2 78,8ms
RTS III 21,8ms

older models

167 72,0ms
159 80,0ms
137 53,8ms
139 50,0ms
RTS 39,4ms