I'm looking for a small digicam with a short Shutter Lag??

Question:I'm tired of missing great pic opportunities, howeverI don't want to have a camera the size of a brick...something that fits into my handbag would be great. How do I know, by looking at the specs, how quick the photo is taken(I can't see "Shutter Lag" anywhere on the photos I'm looking at!! THX

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I'm tired of missing great pic opportunities, howeverI don't want to have a camera the size of a brick...something that fits into my handbag would be great. How do I know, by looking at the specs, how quick the photo is taken(I can't see "Shutter Lag" anywhere on the photos I'm looking at!! THX

If you pre-focus by pressing the shutter button half-way down while aiming at your subject - or where you anticipate your subject will be when you want to take the picture - it will help considerably. You can set your camera in "Sport" mode or "Scenery" and this will minimize the lag. If you do not use the flash, it will help. If you turn off "face detection," it will help. If you turn off the LCD monitor and use the viewfinder only, it will help. If you use the continuous shooting mode for a burst of 4 or 5 shots, there will be no pre-focus in between those shots. For most point and shoot cameras, this will give you 1.5-to-2 frames per second, but you can't use flash.

Some point and shoot cameras are better than others. I have a Canon Powershot SD900 that seems quite fast to me. If you go to http://www.dpreview.com and read the reviews (once they are available for the cameras you are considering), you can go to the page called "Performance" and see exactly what the tested shutter lag is, as well as several other performace benchmarks.

Here's a link showing a chart of various cameras and their shutter lag as well as the time it takes to shoot five frames. You will not see any DSLR's listed, because they have no shutter lag. If you click on the column heading, such as "One Shot," the chart will sort according to that measurement.
http://www.cameras.co.uk/html/shutter-la...

Here's a list of five good cameras with brief shot-to-shot delays of less than 1.5 seconds (in good light) each: http://www.cnet.com.au/digitalcameras/ca...
Canon Powershots SD850-IS and SD750, Sony Cybershots DSC-T100 and DSC-W55, Kodak Easyshare C875.