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.
Used at the 30mm setting, we note some pretty impressive performance - at least four solid stops of hand-holding stabilization. Beyond this, we were getting sharp shots at speeds as low as two seconds. Of course, your mileage may vary.
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| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
Used at the 110mm setting, the performance isn't quite as astounding - perhaps two or two and a half stops, but that's still quite reasonable, allowing solidly reliable shooting at speeds as slow as 1/30s.
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| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
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.
