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, we see at least two stops of hand-holding stability improvement. With OIS turned off, we get 80% of our hand-held shots sharp at the 1/15s shutter speed setting, which conforms to the one-over-focal-length rule of thumb. With OIS turned on, we get 100% sharp shots at the 1/4s shutter speed setting.
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| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
Zoomed in to 55mm, we also see around two stops of improvement:
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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.
