An In-Depth Look at 4 Ultra-compact Digicams

The Timing Tests

* NOTE: For all of our time tests, the cameras are reset to their factory default settings and set to record using the highest resolution and quality setting. They are set to record in Auto mode. We also disabled all sounds and "welcome" screens. We used a PNY 512 MB SD card, Fujifilm 512 MB xD card, and a SanDisk 512 MB Memory Stick Pro Duo.

Before reading our results, please refer to our Testing Procedures page.

Startup Time

The startup time is recorded from the moment that the power button is pushed to the moment that the shutter sounds. All cameras are set to record in Auto mode.

	Startup time (seconds)
Sony DSC-T33	1.59
Canon SD400	1.90
Nikon S1	2.95
Olympus IR-300	4.08

With respect to startup time, the Sony DSC-T33 wins by a small amount over the Canon SD400. The Nikon S1 is still pretty fast at 2.95 seconds. The Olympus IR-300 takes a much longer time to start up compared to the other cameras at 4.08 sec. If you consider that the Canon SD400 is the only one in the bunch that extends its lens during startup, its performance here is even more remarkable.

Auto-Focus and Shutter Lag

To record shutter lag, we perform two tests with the lens at its widest angle setting. For the first test, we pre-focus the lens and measure the amount of time that it takes the camera to take a picture after the shutter button is pressed. The second test measures the time that it takes for the camera to take a picture after we press the shutter button without pre-focusing. Each test is performed 3 times and the results are averaged. For these tests, we enabled the auto area point selection function for each camera (if applicable). For more information regarding our testing procedures, please refer to our Testing Procedures page.

	With Pre-focus (seconds)	Without Pre-focus (seconds)
Sony DSC-T33	‹0.01	0.38
Canon SD400	0.04	0.57
Nikon S1	0.03	0.64
Olympus IR-300	0.13	0.94

The Sony DSC-T33 is clearly the fastest camera here in terms of shutter and focus lag. In general, we have been impressed by the speed of all Sony cameras that we have tested. The Canon SD400 is the second fastest followed very closely by the Nikon S1. We weren't terribly impressed with the Olympus IR-300 in our lag tests. In fact, none of the Olympus digicams that we have ever tested have achieved a faster pre-focused shutter lag time faster than 0.13. When we included focusing in the lag time, the IR-300 took nearly a second to take a picture after pressing the shutter button. In addition, the Olympus IR-300 is the only camera out of the four that showed different lag times when we disabled the auto area AF function. We were a bit surprised to see that the IR-300 took longer (1.28 sec.) to focus and shoot when set to "Spot AF" as opposed to "Auto AF".

Write Times

We recorded 5 different write times using a PNY 512 MB SD card, Fujifilm 512 MB xD card, and a SanDisk 512 MB Memory Stick Pro Duo.

Single Shot - The time that it takes for a single picture to be written completely to the flash card (the time that the "activity light" is on).
Shot To Shot (STS) - The time until the second shot can be taken after the first (shutter to shutter).
Shot To Shot w/Flash - The time that it takes the camera to take two pictures with the flash (from flash to flash).
Shot To Shot w/Buffer Full - The time between the last shot that fills the buffer to the moment that the shutter sounds again.
Clear Buffer - The time that it takes the camera to clear the buffer after a full burst of pictures has been taken.

We performed each test three times and averaged the results. Below are the resolution, quality setting, and average file size used for the tests.

	Resolution (pixels)	Quality setting	Avg. file size (MB)
Canon SD400	2592x1944	Superfine	3.14
Nikon S1	2592x1944	5M*	1.68
Olympus IR-300	2560x1920	Super High	0.83
Sony DSC-T33	2592x1944	Fine	2.20

	Single Shot	Shot to Shot	Shot to Shot w/Flash	Shot to Shot w/Buffer Full	Clear Buffer
Canon SD400	N/A	1.46	5.70	N/A	N/A*
Nikon S1	N/A	1.93	6.55	2.98	10.91
Olympus IR-300	1.51	2.33	6.48	3.37	4.26
Sony DSC-T33	0.90	1.04	5.43	N/A	8.75 / 4.96

In keeping consistent with every other Sony digicam that we have tested in the past, the Sony T33 proves to have an incredibly fast cycle time of 1.04 sec. without the flash. The Canon SD400 has the second fastest cycle time of 1.46 sec. followed by the Nikon S1 and the Olympus IR-300. With the flash enabled, the cameras slow down fairly evenly with the Sony T33 in the lead followed by the Canon SD400. When set to Continuous drive, the most impressive camera was the Canon SD400, which could take images at 2.11 fps for 18 frames. If a faster flash card is used in the SD400, it could continue shooting at this rate until the flash card is filled up. The runner up was the Nikon S1, which took between 14 and 18 frames at 1.61 fps. Again, with a faster flash card, the number of frames would probably be much higher. The Sony T33 has two continuous drive modes. When we set it to "Burst", it was able to take 9 frames at 1.35 fps. When set to "Speed Burst", the T33 was able to take 4 frames at 3.23. The Olympus IR-300 put in a rather mediocre performance, taking 6 frames at 1.29 fps.

We had some difficulty measuring our "Shot to Shot w/Buffer Full" portion because it was impossible for us to fill the buffer for either the Canon SD400 or Sony T33 by taking images one at a time. However, with the Nikon S1, we had to wait nearly 3 seconds (2.98) before shooting another frame after filling the buffer. For the Olympus IR-300, the wait was 3.37 sec. After filling the buffer with a continuous burst of images, the Nikon S1 took the longest to clear its buffer at 10.91 sec. The next slowest was the Sony DSC-T33 followed by the Olympus IR-300.

* We were unable to measure the Canon SD400's buffer clearing time accurately simply because we could never fill the buffer. However, after shooting anything over 18 frames in continuous drive mode, we found that the SD400 took approximately 2 seconds to finish writing data to the SD card.