What you're asking is, how can you reduce the amount of time between the time you press the button and the time it actually goes "click".

Tony - this is what i mean but I had a hard time explaining it! And yes, the camera has 2 levels to the "take a photo" button. Click down to the first stage and it autofocuses and works out exposures, then the 2nd click actually takes the photo when I'm ready.

Ezekiel - The camera has 6M effective pixels but records 12M if selected. Fuji does this with a few of their cameras. My Fuji 6900 has 3.3M pixels but can record 6 in software. Thanks for the link, I'll take a good look.