Digital camera shutter lag time and human reaction time.

[James Latimer]

Various tables of camera model v. shutter lag time are published, e.g. the one at cameras.co.uk.

I take it that they do not include human reaction time, as some of the shutter lag time figures are considerably quicker than the human eye-hand reaction time.

Am I right?

[h4rri]

I guess so in that there would a factor for photographer age. Allegedly your reaction times slow as you age and therefore it would be an issue to measure.

It also wouldn't be a selling point of the camera and would take far too long to explain so would be left out.

[James Latimer]

Originally Posted by h4rri

I guess so in that there would a factor for photographer age. Allegedly your reaction times slow as you age and therefore it would be an issue to measure.

It also wouldn't be a selling point of the camera and would take far too long to explain so would be left out.

The reason I ask is that I've been trying to measure the shutter lag time on my new camera, and wondered how to compare it with other times on the 'net. Using pre-focus seems to give me 0.064 seconds (without reaction time), without using pre-focus 0.298 seconds (without reaction time), which figures seem pretty good!

[richard plumb]

most decent digicams have almost instantaneous shutter release if you've prefocused. Way better than they used to be.

P&Ss lose over DSLRs on the time taken to focus. My T9 is pretty slow compared to my 350d. But if you prefocus its fine. Just have to take it into account.