I bought a pentax optio 50 about a year or so ago, and ever since bought it have had a problem with the shutter lag, anything moving fast (ish) by the time taken photo it has gone.

Any ideas, other than a new camera

have you got some sort of setting enabled in the menu, like my mobile phone lags when 'night mode' is enabled ?

doesnt matter if have it in simple mode or any other mode still slow response, you select the mode on a dial on the top of the body, have also tried different sd cards and still no joy

I don't know if that camera is particularly bad but shutter lag is something that all compacts seem to suffer from. Anything up to a second seems normal. The only solution I know of is to change it for a digital SLR.

reading this review http://www.cameras.co.uk/details/pentax-optio-50.cfm

it seems it's inbuilt.

Shutter Lag and Recycling Times
The Optio 50 managed to take a single shot in 1.6 seconds. This time is a slow time. It took 9.48 seconds to take five consecutive shots. This works out at a rate of one photo more or less every 1.9 seconds. This is a fairly fast time for this type of camera. Therefore you should get a good response from this camera if you wish to reel off two or three pictures in a row, but the time it takes to take a single photo is definitely a problem.

reading this review http://www.cameras.co.uk/details/pentax-optio-50.cfm

it seems it's inbuilt.

Well, that seems to be the order of compact! Most of it have slow response time, and the only way to beat that is to anticipate the event as it evolve and time your shot knowing the shutter lags. That is provided the camera is switched 'On', otherwise by the time the camera is ready to take picture, there is nothing more to make. That's why most of those who tried a DSLR will never want to go back to compact. :D