Tip: How to speed up your point-and-shoot camera.

How to speed up your point-and-shoot camera.

Point-and-Shoot cameras are handy because they're small and easy to use. One thing they're not, however, is fast. Just try taking a picture of something that's moving quickly – like a 3-year-old. The time from when you press the shutter button to when the picture actually gets taken can be several seconds.
This tip will explain why that happens, and in so doing will hopefully show how to shorten this time considerably.

So why does it take so long for the camera to take the picture? Well, when the camera is set to work on full auto, which is how most people use point-and-shoot cameras, it's left to make all the decisions, and there are quite a few decisions to be made. How do you speed up this process? You make some of the decisions for the camera.

Here's a list of the decisions that the camera has to make in order to take a photo, in somewhat chronological order:


Focus: Once the shutter is half-pressed, the camera has to decide which focus point(s) to use, then it has to focus.

White Balance: The camera has to determine what color white is. The light from sunlight and the light from light bulbs look very different to cameras, so the camera has to figure out what it should use to reference what white should look like.

ISO: The camera has to look at how much light there is and determine if it's sufficient for use with a shutter speed that won't give a blurry photo when the camera is handlheld. The amount of light determines the ISO setting.

Metering: This determines which part of the scene the camera is looking at to determine how much light there is. Most modern cameras have a facial recognition setting that is used by default. This searched for faces and uses them to determine focus and exposure.

Flash: In low light conditions, the camera will decide whether or not to use flash. Also, if red-eye reduction is to be used, which sends out a number of brief flashes before the flash that's used to light the actual photo.

Shutter speed and aperture: Based on the ISO, flash and Metering settings, the camera determines the shutter speed and aperture settings.


In order to determine all of these settings, the camera has to first turn off the electronic viewfinder and redirect the light to the sensors inside the camera. While all of these decisions are being made in the camera, you can't see what the camera is pointing at, unless you look through an optical viewfinder, if your camera has one.

In order to speed up the camera, you would have to make some of the decisions for the camera. The easiest way to do this is to switch from full-auto mode to P (program) mode. This unlocks all (or most) of the settings above.

So how do we know what settings to use?


Focus: Switching to just the center focus point usually simplifies focusing. This way, whatever the camera is pointed directly at will be the point of focus. The most important thing, though, is to pause when you half-press the shutter button so the camera can actually obtain focus. There is usually a light that goes on when focus has been achieved. This can take up about half of the time the camera needs to take a photo, so this tip alone can greatly speed up camera response.

White Balance: Most cameras have a number of white balance presets that are pretty straight-forward. Some of these include: Sunlight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash and Custom, as well as AWB (Auto White Balance). Simply choose whichever is the closest to the lighting conditions. Custom lets you either point at or take a photo of something white and use that setting. Custom is by far the most powerful setting, but may take some practice to get it down.

ISO: Put simply, you want to use the lowest setting possible. In bright sunlight, the lowest setting there is should be fine. Indoor or night shots, however, will mean having to turn this up. Too high of a setting will intoduce digital noise that can ruin a picture. For most cameras, this means staying below ISO 200.

Metering: Most of the time, the default setting is just fine, especially if that includes face recognition. For more control, using the Spot or Partial setting can be very handy, especially when used with a center focus point.

Flash: The Auto setting is fine, but turning the flash on or off manually will speed things up. This can also be handy for forcing the flash to fire to be used to fill-in shadows in bright sunlight, for example.

Shutter Speed and Aperture: In P mode, this is automatically determined by the camera. The more adventurous can explore other options if the camera has them.


The more of these settings that can be set manually, the more responsive the camera will be.