Dealing with Latency

Ever push the shutter button on your digital camera and find yourself waiting ... and waiting? That time between pressing and snapping is called latency, and it's a bigger problem than you might realize. You're fine if having a friend or family member stand in front of Grant's Tomb and taking a snapshot, because chances are the person won't be going anywhere until you're done.

When things are moving quickly, though, you can find that the picture you wanted it gone by the time the shutter gets around to opening and closing. Newer models of cameras, particularly DSLRs, keep shaving the latency time. But you don't want to buy a new camera every year, so here are two strategies.

One is to experiment with your camera and get a feel for how much time passes after you press the button before it actually takes the picture. Then you have to anticipate the rhythm of events and take a picture so that things are just where you wanted when the shutter opens.

The other approach works when your camera supports a number of frames a second - the so-called burst rate. Make sure you set the camera to continuous shooting (if you need to do that). You start shooting just before the key moment you expect and stop just after it's done. There's no absolutely guarantee that you'll get what you wanted, but you stand a much better chance that at least one of the frames will get it.