[Maxxum 7D] -shutter lag

I was shooting my pickup volleyball gang last night ( I sprained my
ankle a few weeks ago, it's not healed yet, so... )

I had shot this group (and other sports) several times and with my
Maxxum 9 I had a good feeling for the timing. The shutter lag on the 9
is about 50 - 55ms.

With the Maxxum 7D, the delay seems a bit longer (not really perceptible
in human terms) but the results were well behind the play. It's hard to
quantify without instrumentation, but I would guess that it's closer to
100ms for the Maxxum 7D.

(I was shooting manual focus, manual exp., A/S was off).

Anyone else?

Cheers,
Alan

 

You can measure shutter lag using a turntable that revolves at a known
speed, put a white marker on it and fire when the marker is at
12'o-clock. Take a look at the photo to see how much rotation occurred
between the button press and the image capture. Grab calculator and do
some math...

Another way is to run a digital stopwatch and fire it at a known point
(say 10 seconds). Because you are predicting the start point, your
reaction times don't really matter.

Actually, scrap that and use this website (hmm, it's calibrated to
capture lag up to 2seconds! - maybe the turntable would be better...)
http://www.shooting-digital.com/columns/schwartz/shutter_release_test/default.asp

 

Owamanga wrote:

Doh! I'll try that at 78 RPM (468°/sec) I should get a fairly accurate
measure. I'll do a few on film with the Max 9 as well. (Hmm, I think
my turntable only does 33 and 45 ... should still be pretty good at 45).

Thanks!!

Cheers,
Alan

 

I took a few shots of my son throwing snowballs last week. To capture
the snowball going through the air and so it stood out in the shot, I
had to wait until the snowball had my neighbors red brick as the
backdrop. I was shooting at iso 1600 and didn't notice any lag. Here
is a sample of what I mean.

http://mikmaq.250free.com/snowball.jpg

Joe

 

example: http://www.aliasimages.com/images/PICT0513a.jpg

From the spreadsheet.

45 RPM
Phot Angle Time (ms)
511 53 196
512 58 215
513 57.5 213
514 53 196
515 60 222
516 60 222

Average 211 (ms)... manual focus, manual exposure, shutter
depressed halfway beofore release.

This SUCKS.

Cheers,
Alan

 

www.google.com: "personal equation" measurement

Did you remove your reflex action time? A better setup might be to rig
the camera to take a picture when a beam of light is broken: just drop
something through the beam and some simple arithmetic gives you the
delay.

 

Thanks. (I love the trail of snow on that!).

More scientifically, I followed Owamanga's suggestion and shot 6 frames
of a turntable at 45 RPM. Repeated post text follows:

example: http://www.aliasimages.com/images/PICT0513a.jpg

From the spreadsheet.

45 RPM.
Phot Angle Time (ms)
511 53 196
512 58 215
513 57.5 213
514 53 196
515 60 222
516 60 222

Average 211 (ms)... manual focus, manual exposure, shutter
depressed halfway beofore release.

This SUCKS.

Cheers,
Alan

 

I don't have the equipment for that. You'll just have to go by my
sighted firings of a near depressed shutter (and the low variance).
Since I'm anticipating the crossing of the tapes, finger depressed
already through most of the closing range, I doubt the human delay here
is more than 25ms.

(In reflex testing, the subject sees a light come on, so he can't
anticipate. I can, 'cause I can see the tape approaching the reference
tape).

Cheers,
Alan.

 

It's not a simple reflex time (230ms I read somewhere, in a test where
someone responds to a expected, but unpredictable trigger), Alan was
able to predict exactly when the shutter press was needed, so any
human error will be very small. Off the top of my head, I can't think
how to measure this (Alan will do film tests on other cameras).

Whatever the time is, it's real life. Alan + Camera = 211ms and that
sucks.

 

I just found this by goolging:

From http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/MAX7/D7A12.HTM

"Average (good) shutter response and cycle times. The word that comes to
mind when thinking about the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D's speed is
"average." - But that's not a bad thing, given the field it's playing
in. Full-autofocus shutter lag is actually faster than most d-SLRs, at
about 0.27 second, although its manual focus lag is only slightly better
than the full-autofocus times."

You'll probably learn to compensate slightly, but you're right, it kinda
sucks.

 

Is it just me, or does that clock stop briefly as it passes through 0?
(Netscape 7.2).

With that one, I'm getting a little over 0.1 sec... but there seems to
be a delay at 0 when it passes through (may no mean anything if the
needle 'catches' up at its next 'tick' position.

Maybe I should repeat the turntable test at 33, give me a cleaner hit at
the start point. (Of course I've put away the turntable).

Cheers,
Alan.

 

Or break the beam with a cardboard tab taped to the outside edge of your
record. (on the turntable)

 

http://www.aliasimages.com/images/PICT0522.JPG

About 125 ms.

I'll repeat the turntable tomorrow at 33 RPM. Maybe get a better 'start
time'.

Cheers,
Alan

 

Not just you, the needle seems to be freezing briefly at 0.
Remainds me when I had to demonstrate to a customer that our controller
trips the engine within 40 or 50 ms after a specific condition is met.

 

Yes. I have trouble stopping the arrow within .1 seconds of straight
up....Also, I perceive a small delay in my computer's reaction time. (the
time between when I click the mouse pointer, and when the arrow stops.)
Of course, with any camera, regardless of how fast it is, one's own
reaction time is going to be a factor, so perhaps it doesn't matter, and
your measurement should include that time anyway.......

 

Try using the 1 at the bottom as the firing point rather than the 0 at the
top. It doesn't stop there.

With my D70 I was consistently hitting what looks like the first "notch"
after the start point, 0.05 I guess. But I'm not sure how valid the
test is, given the human element; I also found that I had to consciously
try *not* to predict the firing moment well enough to lead it and hit the
needle right on the 1, which is more a test of my compensation for shutter
lag than of shutter lag itself.

I guess the real test would be having some way to auto-trigger the shutter
at the "correct" moment.

 

The simplest way to do test would be to have a mechanical release that
triggers at the same time the camera shutter button and a very precise
timer. Then all you need is checking the picture for the time it captured.

 

http://biae.clemson.edu/bpc/bp/Lab/110/reaction.htm

190ms, increases with age, men are better than women, etc.

There are computational latencies even when "predicting". Just the
time to visual stimulus (ie, physical reality -> brain) is something
like 20-40ms (op. cit). Sound may be better, 8-10ms; can one make the
turntable click?

Simple computer program. A quick-and-dirty one I just wrote gave me
about 50ms or so after I "locked onto" the 1s stimulus (I don't trust
the result for many reasons though.) Many "reaction time" testers are
online, though none of them do this particular test. www.google.com:
"serial reaction test" -- many tests in the literature, none like this
(probably missed it). The CogSci people are more interested in
recognition stuff, trying to reverse engineer the algorithms in the
brain by timing, until fMRI came along (which measures something like
power consumption).

Yeah, well, but does Alan suck, or does the camera suck? ;-)

 

This site gives lag times in the camera reviews.
May be of interest to you if you haven't already seen it:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/MAX7/D7A7.HTM

 

Or if you have some electronic kit measure the time taken from triggering
the camera with electronic cable release until when the short apears on the
hot shoe.

Pete