Why is my Panasonic camera soooo slow?

longwalks1

ive got a Panasonic Lumix compact camera and using it last weekend at a wedding it seemed to take forever to take a picture after you press the shutter?
Used it a few months ago at a house party and was fine, point and shoot straight away. Last weekend, missed a lot of good shots and it seemed to almost zoom in/zoom out to focus before triggering
Looked through the settings but nothing jumped out at me?
Any help greatly appreciated

Yorkie1

I find it seems to take a photo quicker if you half-press the shutter down initially; this gives the camera time to focus etc.

Johnmcl7

Which Panasonic camera is it?

There's obviously many different causes for slow shots but it sounds like the problem in your case is the autofocus struggling to find focus hence the camera moving back and forth the full focus range to try and get a lock. The camera needs a reasonable amount of contrast to be able to get a quick reliable lock so in scenes where it can't find solid contrast particularly in low light and where there's a lot of movement it will struggle.

Personally I prefer to change the autofocus system to centre point/area and then when taking a shot, point this area at the highest contrast part of the scene then move the camera to get the framing I want making sure the part I've focused on is in line with the rest of the scene. This way I get a consistently quick focus lock and I ensure the camera focuses where I want it to.

John

Laz123

I had one and yes it is slow so it's only good for landscapes or posed shots. I've got a bridge camera now and that can take non-fuzzy shots from a car travelling at 70mph.

Norman_Castle

Mine has two high speed settings in the auto focus mode. These may help but if, as above, there is low light or poor contrast any camera may take time to decide what to focus on.

daveyjp

Also ensure you set the camera for the type of shots you are taking. It is too easy to stick a basic camera on 'auto' and expect all to be Ok, in challenging conditions it won't be.

Johnmcl7

Laz123 wrote: »

I had one and yes it is slow so it's only good for landscapes or posed shots. I've got a bridge camera now and that can take non-fuzzy shots from a car travelling at 70mph.

There's a lot of different Panasonic Lumix compacts so still don't know which one the OP has but there's no inherent advantage bridge cameras have in that they use the same type of autofocus technology (CDAF - Contrast Detect AutoFocus). So while some bridge cameras have quicker AF than some compact cameras there are compact cameras with AF that's just as quick. DSLRs on the other hand use a different type of focus system for their primary AF (PDAF - Phase Detect AutoFocus) which has the advantage that it can detect whether the lens is currently front or back focused which improves focus speed particularly for tracking Continuous AF systems as CDAF systems cannot identify whether the lens is front/back focused.

John

longwalks1

Hi all
Sorry I forgot to say its a Lumix DMC-F5

longwalks1

I used it 3 months ago at a hous party at night, pictures taken both inside and outside came out great (face/head and shoulders/upper body shots), as did a lot of ones taken in the night club too, was very very impressed. Then used it at a wedding a coupel of weekends ago and was pretty disappointed, I havent made any changes to settings that I know of, but it honestly looks at though 2 different cameras were used?

almillar

Far more difficult for a camera to focus in low light, and I'll bet that was the problem at the wedding. Trick would be more light, or turn off autofocus. If everything's far away, the focus should stay the same anyway...

G42

britishboy wrote: »

I used it 3 months ago at a hous party at night, pictures taken both inside and outside came out great (face/head and shoulders/upper body shots), as did a lot of ones taken in the night club too, was very very impressed. Then used it at a wedding a coupel of weekends ago and was pretty disappointed, I havent made any changes to settings that I know of, but it honestly looks at though 2 different cameras were used?

Could you upload one good photo & one bad one to let us see what the lighting conditions were?