Concept

Shutter lag

Summary
In photography, shutter lag is the delay between triggering the shutter and when the photograph is actually recorded. This is a common problem in the photography of fast-moving objects or animals and people in motion. The term narrowly refers only to shutter effects, but more broadly refers to all lag between when the shutter button is pressed and when the photo is taken, including metering and focus lag. In film cameras, the delay is caused by the mechanism inside the camera that opens the shutter, exposing the film. Because the process is mechanical, however, and relatively brief, shutter lag in film cameras is often only noticeable (and of any concern) to professionals. SLRs have slightly longer shutter lag than rangefinders, because of the need to lift the mirror. Point-and-shoot film cameras often have significant shutter lag. Shutter lag is much more of a problem with digital cameras. Here, the delay results from the charging of the charge-coupled device (CCD) and relatively slow transmission of its capture data to the circuitry of the camera for processing and storage. The comet-tail artifact that early CCD sensors suffered from was significantly reduced by the invention of the pinned photodiode (PPD). It was invented by Nobukazu Teranishi, Hiromitsu Shiraki and Yasuo Ishihara at NEC in 1980. The "pinned photodiode" is a photodetector structure used in almost all charge-coupled device (CCD) and CMOS image sensors (CIS) due to its low noise, high quantum efficiency and low dark current. In 1987, the PPD began to be incorporated into most CCD devices, becoming a fixture in consumer electronic video cameras and then digital still cameras. The PPD has since been used in most CCD sensors and then CMOS sensors. Improvements in technology, such as the speed, bandwidth and power consumption of processor chips and memory, as well as CCD technology and then CMOS sensors, have made shutter lag less of a problem. While digital SLRs have achieved lag times around 50 ms by the late 2000s, some EVILs take half as long in the 2010s.
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