So one of the kids (neither owning up) has lost my faithful old Casio compact camera. So I’m looking for a new one.

Needs to be nice and compact, not very expensive and have a quick shutter response for taking biking / action photos.

It’s the shutter lag on a lot of the budget cameras which seems to be a problem. Anyone found anything of note out there?

How about having a look on this website to get things started

my old cannon ixus was fast and have a good reputation

http://snapsort.com/explore/best-digital-cameras

I’ve owned a Canon Ixus 430, Ixus 82is and the older APS version. I’ve not owned the competition so judge what you will.

However, I’ve found that the shutter lag on the Ixus can sometimes be awful, particularly indoors, when it can take a couple of seconds to lock on sometimes. It seems to go in out in out, you realise you are jamming the shutter button down and it’s just sat there not taking the photo.

I think its the multi-point auto focus, which always makes its own mind up and sometimes can’t make its mind up. Even if you disable this in manual mode, it still sometimes appears to do what it wants. Night shots usually come out blurred, typically the final shot looks a mess despite the LCD display looking fine before and after the photo. If it could just use the settings it uses on the live display all would be fine!

However, I’ve found that the shutter lag on the Ixus can sometimes be awful, particularly indoors, when it can take a couple of seconds to lock on sometimes. It seems to go in out in out

That’s cos compact cameras use contrast-detect autofocus, and that’s how it works – slow, less reliable and worse still in low light.

Night shots usually come out blurred, typically the final shot looks a mess despite the LCD display looking fine before and after the photo

Camera shake. The LCD display is very low res, so it can use a really high sensitivity and still be perfectly usable and work fast enough to display the scene. If you captured the LCD image it’d look like absolute dog-poo when blown up. You either need a flash, a tripod or a better camera in low light 🙂

@dobo, that site is gret, but doesn’t really answer the question of shutter lag.

I’m really miffed that the old Casio has been lost as it has one of the shortest shutter lags I’ve seen. Some of the cameras that clients bring seem to be terrible and they are brand names I would have normally expected to be a good bet.

So other than Canon Ixus which sounds like a “do not touch” from what dmjb4 says, does anyone own something reasonably current that does the job well when it comes to a quick response in the shutter department?

You don’t say what your budget is, but I’ve always been a fan of Fuji compacts and until my current compact have used Fuji for years and years without complaint. Don’t remember any real issues with shutter lag.

My current compact is a Panasonic Lumix TZ10 which is ace but not cheap – not sure what the cheaper Panasonics are like but they might be worth a look?

slainte ➡ rob

Don’t really want to spend big money at the moment. Had mixed success with Fuji in the past, one very good and the last one VERY bad. It was a cheap and cheerful 40 quid from Asda model though.

Like the Lumix cameras, but not sure if they’re possibly a bit too bulky to have dangling from the shoulder strap of my backpack. The old Casio was a really good size.