Work has just got a new Fuji S7000 camera which has 6.3 million effective pixels and 12.3 million recorded.

Is there a longer duration between me pushing the button to take a photo and the photo being taken depending on what quality I select?

Or is it so small that its non-existant. I want to avoid as much lag as posssible and as some photos will be printed in A3 and others cropped to A4, I'd like to keep quality high as well.

Depending on the storage media, there is a definite latency in storing data. If I understand correctly, most digitals come with an internal memory buffer to queue up images while they're waiting for the card to finish writing the prior images.

I understand certain cards and/or brands of cards may be faster/slower than others, but I don't know any details.

Also... only 12MP? Are you sure that's enough?

I know theres always a slight delay, but I'm wondering if its makes a difference depending on the quality I select? I.e. does the delay affect the actual photo? It seems silly to have a camera able to take photos with a shutter speed of 1/1000th sec, but have an additonal delay.

Its a Fuji branded 256MB XD card so it should be faster than a Microdrive I would have though.

Anyone with any knowledge?

Oh yeah, I was thinking 12 will just about do the job - nothing quite like 35mm though.

Is there a longer duration between me pushing the button to take a photo and the photo being taken depending on what quality I select?

Keep something in mind...

There are two latencies, and I think the latency you're worried about isn't affected by the storage media or the quality level.

The latency that's affected by the quality level and the speed of the storage flash is the amount of time between pictures. For example, how long after you've taken a picture can you take another one. I don't think that's what you're asking.

What you're asking is, how can you reduce the amount of time between the time you press the button and the time it actually goes "click". That's controlled by something completely different.

The things that are killing you there are the auto-focus, auto-exposure control, and auto-whitebalance. The camera actually performs all of those functions when you press the button, and they all take time, especially the focus.

If you have a camera that can be set to manual focus, manual exposure control, and manual white balance, then your latency between "press" and "click" is almost instant.

Another way around it, that some cameras do (my Canon does this) is that the shutter button is two-stage. You press gently for it to do the exposure/whitebal/focus procedure, then press it further down all the way to actually take the exposure. This allows you to aim and focus and set up your shot (say, focusing on the birthday cake and candles), and then allow you to click the shutter release instantly at the moment the kid blows out the candles. (Or swings the bat, or jumps the pole vault bar, or whatever.)

A review & very detailed information on your camera is available at Dpreview.com.

Your camera is most definitely 6 MP, and cannot record 12MP. A 6MP camera will blow up to about 20"x30" without a problem.

The lag between photos has to do with the time to write to your card. This is affected by two things - file size and speed of card. So, if you shoot at lower resolution or greater jpeg compression, your time lag should be reduced. (And yes, your XD will most likely be faster than your microdrive - I have a 1GB Sandisk Ultra II CF card which can do about 9MB/second - it is noticably faster in use than my standard 256MB Sandisk consumer card)

I don't have any experience directly with your camera, but I do own a Canon 10D (6.3MP) and it'll shoot 9 shots at 3 frames/second before I have to pause. The maximum shot speed & number of frames should be in your owners manual. There's also extensive timing information at dpreview here.

The Dpreview.com site I linked to has very good forums, I'm sure there's folks more knowledgeable than myself there.

-Zeke

I know theres always a slight delay, but I'm wondering if its makes a difference depending on the quality I select?

If the quality you select changes the final size of the file, then yes it will affect the speed. Take some pictures of the same scene at different quality levels and compare the file sizes.

Because of the buffering, you shouldn't notice a write delay until the internal buffer is full. The larger the images' file sizes, the faster you fill that buffer and consequently, the earlier you will notice a write delay.

My buddy has one of the Canon SLRs. He has something like an 8 or 16mb buffer and his storage media is a (1gb) microdrive. IIRC, he can take about 20 high quality images at the fastest repeat speed before the buffer is filled up. At that point, the camera won't take another shot until one of the previous images has completed writing to disk, when it will snap another frame. Each image is ~2mb I believe.

Its a Fuji branded 256MB XD card so it should be faster than a Microdrive I would have though.

Just googled for "microdrive speed" and got this link that you may find interesting: http://www.d-store.com/d-store/Canon/D30/D30compactflasandmicrodrivespeed.htm

I.e. does the delay affect the actual photo? It seems silly to have a camera able to take photos with a shutter speed of 1/1000th sec, but have an additonal delay.

Are we talking about the same thing? The delay is a write delay; it has nothing to do with the shutter speed... The camera will take the image at the shutter speed it (or you) choose, store that in buffer memory, then write it to your storage card.

What you're asking is, how can you reduce the amount of time between the time you press the button and the time it actually goes "click".

Tony - this is what i mean but I had a hard time explaining it! And yes, the camera has 2 levels to the "take a photo" button. Click down to the first stage and it autofocuses and works out exposures, then the 2nd click actually takes the photo when I'm ready.

Ezekiel - The camera has 6M effective pixels but records 12M if selected. Fuji does this with a few of their cameras. My Fuji 6900 has 3.3M pixels but can record 6 in software. Thanks for the link, I'll take a good look.

Ezekiel - The camera has 6M effective pixels but records 12M if selected. Fuji does this with a few of their cameras.

Aaah, I wonder if this has to do with Fuji's super CCD?

I believe so. I watched a flash movie about how it works - but I'm still none the wiser!

I like the continuous shooting mode of the camera, but this is where the other kind of latency you mentioned hampers me and it slows right down after a few photos. Oh well, technology can only improve, right?

Click on the 4th generation SuperCCD bit to see how it works. I suppose all companies will do this, not just Fuji.

http://www.fuji.co.uk/digital/cameras/s7000/index.php?flash=6

So, this CCD is shaped like a honeycomb instead of like a screen door? That's cool, I was wondering when they were going to start doing that kind of thing. I forsee a future when all CCD and display technology is done that way, and our idea of an X/Y pixel grid is not as straightforward as it once was...

(Four...)

They've been doing this for a few years now - my 3 year old 6900 uses that technology but its getting better all the time. I edited my last post to link the movie instead of waffling on!

Unfortunately SuperCCD doesn't really work very well, in that if you look at 12mp images from their cameras with 6pm sensors you can see grainy artefacts that aren't there on the 6mp images.

The reviews of these SuperCCD cameras by people I trust tend to say "keep it in non-Super CCD mode to get the best results". For example:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilms7000/page14.asp

It is a bit of a gimmick. There is no point having the extra "pixels" if it just means you get more noise. Because of the extra noise you don't actually get any extra detail, you may just as well take the 6mp image and resample it in Photoshop.

Many people don't seem to understand this point.

The latest 8mp pro-sumer cameras are a bit of a red herring for similar reasons. You need a larger sensor (like the ones in DSLRs) to get decent noise performance out of 6mp+ images.

P.S. I'm not saying the S7000 isn't a good camera, just saying it would be best kept out of 12mp mode...

It's really quite simple. The "super CCD" has its pixels (photosites) organized in a diagonal matrix instead of a rectangular matrix. Since virtually all existing image processing software works ONLY with a rectangular pixel matrix, the images from a superCCD have to be converted to rectangular format (eg. .tiff, .jpg, .psd, ...). Since the real camera pixels are not in that format, some interpolation is required to fill in the gaps, which results in about double the number of pixels in the recorded file. One then has the option of having the camera collapse the file back down to a 6mp rectangular matrix, or leaving it as the 12mp rectangular expanded matrix. But there's still only 6mp worth of genuine image detail in there regardless.

-ml

Interesting. I'm pretty sure that 6MP is going to cover your printing to A4 handily in any case. If you're new to digital might I also suggest Luminous Landscape as a good source of work flow and technical information about digital image processing & digital photography. The webmaster is a very opinionated individual, but his trove of articles is some very good reading, I've learned a lot at that site.

-Zeke

Thanks for the info. Yeah i reckon 6MP will do me fine. I'm hopeless at photography though. I hope to become a bit better in time.

Digital can definitely help with that. The immediate feedback in the viewscreen as well as having all the exposure information recorded in the EXIF data is helpful. I'd also recommend picking up a basic photography book so you can get a good explanation of the mechanics of photography (focal length, f-stops, exposure) as well as some tips on photo composition and the more artistic things that go into effective photography. I've had a ball the last few years since I got my first real camera.

-Zeke

the camera has 2 levels to the "take a photo" button


You know, I wish they would replace this feature with a second button that would lock and hold the automatic settings until released. Holding the button with just enough force till the right moment is a pain!

So, this CCD is shaped like a honeycomb instead of like a screen door?


More like a screen door turned at 45 degrees.

But there's still only 6mp worth of genuine image detail in there regardless.

Actually, I would say there are 2mp worth of resolution. You see, in almost EVERY digital camera, each pixel collects one primary color of light which is then combined in order to create a full color image. Hence, even though the camera is collecting 6mp worth of light, it takes three of those pixels to make one pixel in the final image.

The only camera I know of so far that captures RGB color on EVERY pixel is a Sigma. Pretty nice camera, actually.

You know, I wish they would replace this feature with a second button that would lock and hold the automatic settings until released. Holding the button with just enough force till the right moment is a pain!

Which is exactly how you can configure Canon DSLRs to work. You can also separate out focus lock from auto exposure lock as well. Very handy when recomposing shots after fixing the focus or exposure.

P.S. you can't do this on the Canon D300/Digital Rebel, it was one of the features from the Canon 10D that they dumbed down

Nope, there really is 6mp of image detail there. But not every pixel has every colour included, that's all. So the result is that there may only be 2mp worth of COLOUR information, but there's still a full 6mp of detail to scrutinize.

Cheers

It seems to work - caught an early butterfly.

I suppose a more correct way to say this is, there are definitely 6mp worth of detail there, but each pixel records only one of three (1/3) primary colours. The missing colour information is interpolated from adjacent pixels. So the true colour resolution is somewhere between 2mp and 6mp, but the image detail (think: Black & White) is a full 6mp.

Cheers

One more comment on the 12mpix vs. 6mpix setting....

I suspect this is similar (or halfway on the way) to using "RAW" mode: that's where you record exactly what the CDD output, without using the camera's on-board noise reductions, interpolation, compression etc. algorithms which the camera automatically applies to the CCD output based on hardcoded and shot-analysis defined settings. You then use desktop software to do a better final analysis and processing of the data and metadata stored with it.

For some sorts of camera work, this might be useful.

But back to the 12 vs. 6 situation:

So, if you use the 12mpix mode, you'll need an offboard processor that knows how to deal properly with the un-interpolated data.

The idea here (and in the RAW processing above) is that the offboard processor (in the desktop software) might be able to do a better job than the firmware in the camera, assuming there was a reason that the firmware on the camera doesn't support the better algorithm, such as processing time, etc.

-brendan

So, if you use the 12mpix mode, you'll need an offboard processor that knows how to deal properly with the un-interpolated data

Except that you don't, because the camera will also output jpegs in 12mp mode.

> output jpgs in 12...

oh. well, so much for me spouting off on that then.



-brendan

So the true colour resolution is somewhere between 2mp and 6mp, but the image detail (think: Black & White) is a full 6mp.

Good point.

The only camera I know of so far that captures RGB color on EVERY pixel is a Sigma. Pretty nice camera, actually.

As if on cue Phil has posted his full review of the new Sigma SD10

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd10/

That is a fairly full & comprehensive review, how big are raw image filescompared to jpegs?

Looking at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd10/page9.asp the hi-res SD10 files are about 8MB.

The jpegs (on the highest setting) that my Canon 10D produces are typically less than 2.5MB, the RAW file sizes on the Canon are lower as well, at around 7MB (though that has a hi-res jpeg embedded in it as well, so the actual RAW data is more like 4MB and if you choose to have a lower quality jpeg embedded the file is smaller).

I'm tempted. Haven't taken the plunge yet, got too much tied up in my old kit 2 x OM4Ti + lenses from 16mm fisheye all the way up. Now if I'd got rid of my Olympus stuff instead of all my EOS stuff I'd only have to buy a body...