Close Examination of Fuji X-Series Lag Time

rlx wrote:

Thanks Easycass for this detailed study. I am happy to see that I was not the only one feeling the lags. I got the XE1 a year and a half ago and I am still hoping that some day Fuji might fix the lag issues. Of course they are doing their best and the minimizing of the EVF lag in the XE2 and the XT1 is a proof of that, but the shutter lag issue was not addressed yet. Since those same shutter lags are still there when you mount a legacy manual lens on the camera, it is quite obvious to me that the origin of the shutter lag lies in the way Fuji built their software.

Although Fuji is extremely good at mechanical and optical design and production I feel that they just tried to reuse the software they have used successfully for many years on their point and shoot cameras. Unfortunately that approach appears to be to restrictive in that it does not allow the exploitation of the full capabilities of the X series hardware.

Here are a couple of lag measurements I just made with the XE1 and an old manual Olympus OM 28mm f/2.8 lens. I mention the lens name just to make it obvious that the XE1 does not have to do any focusing or aperture control here. The ISO is fixed at 200, the speed at 1/30s. So it is a pure manual camera.

I use a USB microphone to capture the sound of the thumb hitting the shutter and then the shutter noise. I run an app that displays the sound on a monitor. Then I freeze the screen and measure the time between the moment my thumb hits the shutter and the time the shutter actually opens. Here is a screen capture of my first test. The lag is 0.3s.

XE1 lag on full press with a manual lens and in manual mode.

In the next test the EVF was magnified (by clicking the wheel). The lag is longer when hitting the shutter with a magnified EVF. This occurs often when using a manual lens and it also occurs when using the 55-200 since the 55-200 autofocus needs often to be retouched at least at the long end. The lag is almost doubled here and I feel that a 0.5s lag is way too long. I would be nice if the engineers at Fuji worked at reducing that lag :-).

XE1 lag on full press when the EVF is magnified with a manual lens and in manual mode.

Hi there,

I should have done the same thing, but did not at the time have the necessary software to display the sounds I was hearing. Instead, as described in observation #9 of the report, here is an updated version with links to videos of the two states, where the shutter response is faster at 200ms, and when slower at around 500ms: -

1. When a lens has been had its focus adjusted, at a stopped down aperture, when the shutter-release button is half pressed, as the aperture blades are moved to the stopped-down position, the characteristics of the audible sound sourced from within the lens changes. This is best described as follows: 1) when the lag is within the 200ms range (normal), the sound is a definitive short 'click' at shutter-half press, and a longer click-motor sound when the shutter is unpressed (see video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA5Rq5Muk7g). 2) When the lag is within the 300-500ms range (longer lag than normal), the sound sequence is reversed, with a longer click-motor sound at shutter-half press, and a definitive short 'click' sound when the shutter is unpressed (video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKxZDXXL5O8).

So, in the first case, I actually find the black out period is longer after the shutter is fired, but in the second case, where the shutter lag before the shot is longer, the black-out period is shorter afterwards. There is something happening in the lens, not directly tied to the aperture blades themselves, but linked to the focusing motors I believe (which is why a half turn of teh lens focus either way has some influence on things, even though I do not know 'why' it is like that). In the faster case, the 200ms response time, the extra motor movement occurs after the shot, and in the second case, the 500ms response time, the extra motor sound happens before the shutetr is fired.

This explains what I am seeing and hearing...

If you listen carfully on half press, and on unperss, in both the short lag and long lag case, maybe you can hear the same, although this is with the 56mm, so your test, with a different lens, may be highlighting just yet another issue in which a delay can be induced (EVF magnified lag)?

Cheers,

Cass.