The Canon EOS 350D has a fixed self-timer of 10 seconds, and the manual doesn't mention any way of shortening it. I use the self-timer for night shots, where even the movement of a button press can mess up an otherwise perfect photo. For such usage, those 10 seconds are quite long.

I started to play with the "mirror lock-up" feature. In the custom functions (C.Fn.) menu you can enable mirror lock-up. If you do this and then use the self-timer, the timer is reduced to about a second. This means a double advantage of the mirror lock-up feature: less movement blur and also less waiting.

Update

I got some questions about the workings of the mirror lock-up. When you use the self-timer, taking a photo follows those steps:

• Focus the camera either manually or with the auto-focus.

• Fully press the shutter button.

• The mirror now locks into the upper position and the self-timer starts to run.

• About a second or two later the photo is taken.

• The mirror comes back down again so you can prepare for another shot.