Digital Home Thoughts: Why Digital Cameras Often Shoot the Pony But Get Only the Tail

"Glenn Maxwell vividly recalls the only whale-watching cruise he ever took, two years ago off Puerto Vallarta. As waves rocked the boat, he says, scores of the giant mammals leapt clear of the water. Alas, Mr. Maxwell's memories of his Mexican adventure are better than his snapshots. Knowing a photo opportunity when he saw one, the Detroit computer programmer took dozens of pictures with his $500 Olympus digital camera. But each time he pressed the button, the camera paused, the whale flopped back in the ocean, and, Mr. Maxwell says, "I only got sky or sea." Mr. Maxwell was the victim of "shutter lag" -- a maddening hesitation between the moment the button is pushed to take a picture and the time the picture is actually taken. Rarely an issue with traditional film photography, shutter lag is notorious among the 75 million owners of digital cameras, which use filmless imaging technology."



Shutter lag was a HUGE problem when I got my first couple digital cameras, as the picture above illustrates. This peacock was facing me, very nicely filling the entire frame. Alas, by the time the camera took the picture, the peacock had lost interest/patience in me. :( My newer cameras are all Sonys, and while Sony is evil, they've always prided themselves on super-fast start-up. My main problem now is the write time after the picture was taken. Is shutter lag the bane of your existence? Have you learned to live with it, or overcome it? Tell us about it. :)