I’ve talked to a number of people, friends, strangers and other photographers about Image Stabilization, and the comparison of In-Camera Stabilization vs. Lens Stabilization. In the photography world, stabilizing your camera and lens means the difference between a soft, blurry picture and a fantastically sharp picture. If you are shooting landscapes and want to get a nice, crisp image, stabilizing your camera with a tripod is generally a must. Taking a tripod or monopod with you wherever you go isn’t ideal for most people, especially consumers that just want to take some party snaps.

Enter Image Stabilization. Back in 1995, Canon camera manufacturer introduced a revolutionary lens component made up of small motors and gyroscopes to “stabilize” the lens to prevent camera shake, called Image Stabilization. This allowed the photographer to shoot at even slower shutter speeds, and still retain a sharp image. The general rule of thumb for 35mm photography was to keep your shutter speed as fast as your focal length. What does that mean? If you are shooting with a wide angle lens, a 24mm lens, then you would want to keep your shutter speed at 1/25s (one twenty fifth of a second). The wider the lens, the less shake will appear in your image, thus a little easier to create a sharper image. If you wanted to shoot a close up of a bird, or a sporting event, then a standard telephoto lens would have a focal length of 200mm, or 6x (consumer lens nomenclature doesn’t use ‘mm’ as a focal length, but use the ‘x’). That would mean if you wanted a sharp image, you should shoot at 1/200s.

Sometimes it’s not feasible to expose the scene properly AND use an adequate shutter speed for the current application. If it’s dark outside and you want to capture your son playing football, you need a lot of light. Usually 1/200s is not going to let in enough light. Easily enough you could use a slower shutter speed, say 1/50s (which lets in 3 times as much light as 1/200s), you could get a better exposure. The resulting image, if not held stable, would probably be blurry.

What lens stabilization allowed the photographer to do was to shoot at slower shutter speeds and keep the lens much more stable than hand holding and get a crisp, clear picture. I personally have been to wedding halls where I needed to shoot at 1/20s (very very slow) which would be near impossible to do at 200mm without Lens Stabilization. With lens stabilization, it made it much easier to perform the task at hand. The downside was that the new Lens Stabilization lenses cost a premium, and also an increase in weight. Whatever the price, if it made your pictures better, it was worth it.

Canon lenses with Image Stabilization will carry the “IS” mark on the lens, thus indicating it’ has the feature built in. Nikon has the same feature, VR, Vibration Reduction. Other manufacturers are slowly getting on board, but in a different way. Minolta was the first manufacturer to introduce In-Camera Stabilization built right into the camera body. This meant that ALL of your lenses would now be stabilized. But what it really did, was shifted the image sensor around to compensate for the shake. A sophisticated processor and algorithm would measure the amount of shake, and try and compensate for it. How well it worked I have no idea. I never tested it. Common sense would think, “Hey, this camera will always have stabilization, it must be superior!”. Sure it sounds nice and dandy, but it’s not analyzing the problem correctly. In-Camera Stabilization will try and compensate for the problem (the lens is not stable enough, thus there is a lot of camera shake), while Lens Stabilization corrects the problem (lens stabilization actually reduces the amount of shake at the lens, making it easier to use slower shutter speeds).

As technology has advanced, more and more manufacturers are putting In-Camera Stabilization into their cameras, predominantly their consumer cameras. I can agree that it’s more beneficial than not having any form of stabilization at all, but lens-stabilization will always be superior. Canon has been putting Image Stabilization, IS, into their consumer cameras for a number of years now, and it works like advertised. Don’t let a salesman tell you which one is better, because now you know the real truth.

It wont be long will until most manufacturers will have both systems, providing even greater freedom for the photographer. There will always be a need for a good tripod though, image stabilization won’t help you much at any shutter speed slower than 1/10s.

Now, here are some real world examples of how effective it is:

No Image Stabilization

With Image Stabilization

I hope this helps in your future purchase of a new camera. I personally wouldn’t buy a small point & shoot camera without it. It can be the difference between a picture you keep forever, and one you just delete. But don’t let it be a crutch!