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 the wider end (18mm), we see some decent performance here, with two (if not 2 1/2) stops of hand-holding improvement with IS activated. Rob was clearly having a good day with this camera (and perhaps owing its overall low weight), being able to pull out some sharp shots at shutter speeds as slow as four seconds.
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| Mouse over this chart to show results with IS activated. |
At 55mm, we also see some good results, with around two stops of hand-holding improvement. Results are more typical here, with Rob only getting sharp shots 50% of the time at 1/4 second, but stable shots at 1/15s.
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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.
