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 provide 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 landscape tack-sharp knows exactly what I'm talking about.
At 18mm, with VR inactive, we see stable shots at the 1/15 setting; turning on VR, we see stable results down to 1/4 of a second, or a 2-stop improvement.
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| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
Zoomed in to 140mm, we see an impressive improvement of 4 stops; unstabilized, we see stable shots at 1/125 of second. With VR enabled, we now see stable results at 1/8 of a second (and even 60% sharp shots at 1/4 of a second).
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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.
