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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Perthshire Scotland
Posts: 8,168
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IS/VR - In the lens ? - or the body ?
I was reading about this the other day. I was going to add it to the other thread but thought I'd start a new one to see what people have and what they think.
Canon kicked IS/VR off in 1995 by putting it in SLR lenses - the idea of having it in the body (moving film up down) would be an engineering nightmare.
With DSLRs, image stabilization can be addressed by the sensor but Canon and Nikon maintain that stabilization should be in the lens and not the body whilst other manufacturers now include it in the body.
I'll swipe this from the net but the debate seems to be:
Advantages of Image Stabilized lenses
There is a body of opinion (mostly from Canon and Nikon...) which states that optically stabilized lenses are capable of better stabilization than moving sensor body based systems. The claim is that each stabilization hardware is dedicated to size, weight and focal length so the performance parameters are tuned to that particular lens. In addition, a very small displacement of an optical element can result in a large image shift, so large amplitude shifts can more easily be corrected. This may be more of an issue with long telephoto lenses than wideangle lenses, since the image shift for a given amount of camera movement is proportional to the focal length of the lens in use.
The undeniable, advantage of image stabilized lenses is that not only do they stabilize the image on the sensor, they also stabilize the image in the viewfinder too. This leads to a better user experience and allows the photographer to chose a moment to release the shutter when image movement appears to be at a minimum.
Advantages of senor shift body based image stabilization
The primary advantage of body based stabilization is that it's effective with every lens mounted on the camera. It doesn't matter if it's the latest autofocus super-zoom, or a 30 year old manual focus lens, in each case the image is stabilized.
The second obvious advantage is that you only pay for the IS system once, when you buy the camera body.
My understanding is that if Canon and Nikon put IS/VR in the body - a lot of people will have IS/VR lenses and although you can switch it off on the lens - the two shouldn't be used together. Another view is that they make more money from selling IS/VR lenses.