Red Means Go; Photos to Audio

I think that I need to get off the topic of Free Staters, marijuana, Dems, Reps, all things politics and talk about cameras, after all that is the beauty of this blog right? I get to do a bit of both!

So, today I think that it I should talk about the beauty of image stabilization. It's nothing new, but it is for me. I just got a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM. BEAUTIFUL.

All the major camera companies have their own type of stabilization, it could be in the lens or in the camera body. Canon has it in select lenses. This goes with Nikon, as well as third party lens makers Sigma, ok they make cameras too but their lenses are better, and Tamron. The camera makers that have decided to put their stabilization in the camera body are Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, and Samsung. They all have their own their own names for their special systems, but the lens systems all really work in the same way, and this goes for the camera body stabilization too, for the most part, they all like to throw in there little tricks to make them a little different.

For this blog post, we'll just look at lenses. This is what I'm used to, so it will make more since to start off with anyways. Canon has IS (Image Stabilizer, how cliche), Nikon has VR (Vibration Reduction), Sigma OS (Optical Stabilization), and Tamron has VC (Vibration Compensation). Now that all the you know all the abbreviations, then it will be easier to know what I am talking about.

There are generally two types of image stabilization, not

to be confused with Canon's IS when I say this, compensation for vertical and horizontal movement.

This is image was taken from the Canon IS page.

So, say the subject is running down a soccer field, the lighting conditions are crap, and you don't have a monopod for support, using the lens image stabilization lets you capture the image sharper you may without it. There is always the chance of extra motion blur, increased ISO, and well you may just have missed that shot just because you knew without some type of support, or image stabilization, the shot wasn't going to come out the way you wanted it to.

Whenever IS, VR, OS, and VC is used is obviously to get that nice steady shot. BUT! When it gets dark, it also proves its worth as well, much more so than during the day. It is based all on a system og gyros in the lens. This is the Nikon VR gyro...

This image was taken from the Nikon VR page.

...and much like the others, it commentates for vertical and horizontal movement when shooting, and at night this can be really great because if you aren't using a monopod, you usually have to boost the ISO to get a decent shutter speed to get the photos to come out sharp, well with image stabilization on, this gives the photographer a greater advantage over a photographer that is in the same position without image stabilization.

The camera technology that has come out is remarkable, and it's amazing that image stabilization is only going to continue to get better.