I guess you have not tried very many home made models. I have a 2.0 meg (olympus D380) which I converted to IR which triggers very close to the 1 second mark. Most of the homebrews will trigger at near the 2 second mark (depends on your camera used). The biggest thing about my camera is, that I have only about $200 invested (+ my time) and this includes extra batteries and an extra slave flash for addded night picture distance.

I think that you can get a higher priced store bought cam which will work great, but with the home brew, you can get as good if not better then the store bought, for alot less money. Plus you can build yourself exactly what you want, not have to settle what the stores will sell you.