5 Materials And Technologies That Just Might Eliminate Digital Camera Shutter Delay

 

Bob pushed the shutter release button and... NOTHING HAPPENED. His son received the football, and the photo he took was of a cheerleader's pom-pom. Bob missed the touchdown too. He resisted an insane urge to slam the camera to the ground and jump on it.

This was his first digital camera, and Bob had just experienced an unpleasant surprise. He had used film cameras all his life, but when his Yashica went into the shop, a friend loaned him a digital camera. He naively decided to take some action shots and discovered the most maddening "feature" of digital cameras—the shutter delay.

MADDENING AND FRUSTRATING

Articles on this subject have attributed shutter delay to:

1. The camera's focus system

2. The amount of time the camera takes to digitally process the image

3. Reaction time for the photographer

Most individuals who use digital cameras are familiar with lag times of one and three. Most have used a film camera, and they know it needs a few milliseconds to focus.

Reducing the lens's aperture to enhance depth of field is a straightforward solution. Alternatively, you can direct the camera towards the object you want to focus on, depress the shutter button halfway to instruct it what to focus on, then move the camera to the center of the image and depress it further.

Regarding human reaction time, it hasn't significantly changed for users of film cameras, and individuals who are experienced in taking action shots typically achieve the desired results.

Let's focus on the second factor, which is the processing time of the picture.

Time to do the processing.

Processing the picture involves several steps to transfer it from the image sensor to the flash card storage.

1. Color corrections. The camera has to examine each and every Charge Couple Device (CCD) element on the photo sensor. It adds green, blue, and red to achieve the right color balance. For a 3 megapixel camera, the processor has to make 9 million calculations.

2. Sharpening. This boosts the contrast by detecting and sharpening edges.

3. Compression. This process converts the 12 to 14 bits of each CCD sensor to 16 bits by "padding" the information and compressing it to 8 bits. This compresses the file size to 9 megabytes.

These steps require a tremendous amount of computational time. No wonder Bob missed his shot!

Watching the action

There are two ways to capture action:

1. The "consecutive mode." If the camera is equipped with this mode, it allows you to capture a series of quick shots as you move through the event. This mode necessitates a camera that has a large "buffer" to store photos for processing.

2. Anticipate shots by depressing and holding down the shutter release prior to the event. This requires the ability to predict the future, something most of us don't possess.

THE FUTURE OF FASTER SHOOTING

Obviously, faster microprocessing would simplify all of this. Even with large buffers, the rate at which the CCD conveys data prevents the processor from transmitting data at a faster speed. Microprocessing speed is the next bottleneck.

Faster clock rates and data transfer speeds would reduce or even eliminate "shutter lag" time. There are several technologies in the wings that offer hope:

1. Nanotube and nanowire technologies. These are both the offspring of "nanotechnology," the ability to make tiny machines at the "nano" level, a billionth of a meter in size rather than a millionth of a meter (micrometer), and offer hope for a 500 GHz clock rate or more.

2. DNA Yes, you heard me right. DNA strands serve as the foundation for computing, storing and processing information.

3. Other materials

• For years, the military has used gallium arsenide, which has a much faster speed.

• Silicon-Germanium chips increase the transfer of light signals to silicon. Traditionally, these have performed optimally at ultra-cold temperatures, but numerous computer simulations have demonstrated their potential to reach up to 1000 GHz (1 THz) at room temperature.

• Indium-antimonide. Much faster than silicon

•Optical transistors. Chalcogenide, a glass material, transforms into a switch by altering its refracting properties. There's no requirement to convert those photons into any other form.

• Coated viruses. The latest research involves coating viruses with a conducting material. We can achieve much higher speeds at the molecular level. This will give a new meaning to the term "computer virus."

4. Parallel Processing. Recent battles between Intel and AMD over the number of parallel processors in a CPU have highlighted the potential benefits of parallel processors for digital camera processing, particularly in areas such as focus, sharpening, and squeezing.

5. Improvement in instructional efficiency by reducing the lines of code would make the whole process more efficient.

Hold on and wait for the future

This annoying shutter delay may be solved by processor material and software improvements.

But we've got awhile to wait for it. Although a few alternate materials have been around for awhile, everything else is still in the research and development phase. Even when it finally emerges from the labs, your future digital camera will likely cost between $10000 and $1500.

The price tag for the ability to take pictures as fast as a film camera is quite high! Still…

Once the memory card captures the photo, the digital camera outperforms film cameras, except for the lag. The new technology will be worth the wait.

Digital camera owners are known for their ability to wait. As they desperately press the shutter release to capture the fleeting smile of their new baby, or the football that lands in his hands eighteen years later, when he scores the winning touchdown, digital camera owners are known for their ability to wait.

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