Digital Lag: Capturing a "Kodak Moment"

An expensive 6 megapixel camera or an inexpensive 3 megapixel one, if you miss the "moment", it won't matter how good your equipment is and how much you spent on it. Learn how to overcome shutter lag and capture your "Kodak Moment."

With digital cameras, capturing a "Kodak Moment" has never been so easy... and so difficult.

It's never been so easy because with our digital cameras we can basically snap away like madmen with a machine gun and see right there and then whether we've captured the moment.

But it's also never been so difficult because of the annoying thing known as "shutter lag."

Shutter lag is a digital phenomenon, and refers to the time between the moment that you hit the button to take the picture and the moment that the camera actually captures the image. Lag time can reach nearly 2 seconds! That's like an eternity when trying to capture a moment. I mean I've seen my children go from laughing to crying in that amount of time!

Film cameras really don't have any lag, but on many digital models (though not the more expensive SLRs), the lag is considerable. Considerable enough to mean the difference of capturing the moment and not.

The truth is, as much experimenting as you want to do and as much as you want to spend on equipment, taking pictures is all about capturing a moment. Miss the moment and it doesn't matter what kind of camera you have.

I once went to a friend's to see his wedding pictures. He showed me the pictures shot by a professional using the best camera, flash, lighting system and other equipment. Then he showed me pictures taken by friends and family with disposal cameras and average digital cameras. Though the professional took better quality pictures, the friends caught much better moments.

I'll take a captured moment over quality any time. I recently went to a birthday party with my children. My youngest daughter was having a blast, smile painted on her face. I kept trying to take pictures of her, but when I looked at the screen, all I that was left was an arm or wisp of hair as she had moved away by the time the camera captured (or missed) the moment.

I believe without a doubt the #1 Rule in photography is Get the Shot. So what to do about this pesky shutter lag problem?

Digital cameras work by first pressing the shutter button half way to focus and then fully depressing to take the picture.

What you can do is if you know you are getting ready to take a picture is:

1. Turn off all automatic features like red-eye reduction

2. Focus on your subject a couple of seconds before you know you want to take the picture, track the subject, wait for your Kodak moment, and then...Bam...take the picture and capture the moment.

Andrew is a former journalist and like many others in their mid-thirties still trying to figure out what he wants to do when he grows up. At the same time, he loves to capture "moments" and tell stories through photos. He is the creator of http://www.DazzlingDigitalPrints.com - a web site packed with tips, reviews, advice and newsletter all to help you get best digital prints possible.

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