Most people tend to think of image stabilization as being mainly for telephoto lenses. While it's true that their longer focal lengths tend to magnify the effects of camera shake, image stabilization can provde a very useful assist at wider angle focal lengths as well; anyone who's ever tried to blur the image of a waterfall, while keeping the surrounding landsape tack-sharp knows exactly what I'm talking about.
At 10mm, we see about 1-1.5 stops of improvement:
 |
| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
Zoomed in to 18mm, we see around 2-2.5 stops of improvement:
 |
| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
The IS worked quite well, though we didn't see the 4-stop improvement that Canon advertised. However, Rob our lens technician, has very steady hands, so your experience with IS may vary.
IS systems tend to provide more benefit to less-stable shooters than very steady ones, so most users will see the same or greater amounts of shake reduction as we measured here. You can read more about our IS test methodology here: SLRgear IS Test Methodology, v2.
