What was the world like pre IS

[tony fanning]

Everything in this forum is geared around everyone topping up Canons coffers with over £1000 for the latest "must have" lens- the 70-200 2.8 IS.
being new to wedding photography, what happened in the days pre IS. Did you all have shaky hand syndrome with only half a dozen keepers from a wedding? Or have you all changed style to PJ and sniping your way through a wedding/
This isn`t meant to be a critisism, just an observation and a willingness to learn.

[mmahoney]

I think IS on the longer lenses like the 70-200 is a godsend. On something shorter like the 17-55 it's a solution in search of a problem.
Mike

[cosworth]

Pick up and old birding book for the answer. God awful clarity.

[2gDSM]

I think IS on the longer lenses like the 70-200 is a godsend. On something shorter like the 17-55 it's a solution in search of a problem.
Mike

Never tried the 17-55 IS yourself before have ya?

[mmahoney]

Never tried the 17-55 IS yourself before have ya?

Yes I have, and don't need it at the focal lengths that lens has .. OTOH I'm selling my 70-200 2.8 to get the 70-200 2.8 IS.

[sblais]

What was the world like pre IS?

I'm assuming something like this:


177901

Seriously though, IS on focal lengths like 17-55 and a bit further tend to be useless to me. Sure it won't hurt, but in order to avoid motion blur, I usually try to use a shutter speed around 1/60, which is of course also good to prevent shake at these focal lengths. In some cases, I want to exploit a certain ambient lighting for a given shot (usually a posed-candid) then a slower shutter speed may be more suitable and IS allows me to handhold the shot.

But, on longer focal lengths, I agree that it's a godsent! I also use 1/60 for my 70-200mm... All my pics would be blurry if not for IS!

But to answer your questions, I think that before IS, photographers wouldn't really use very long focal lengths and used tripods, monopods to avoid camera shake. But I wasn't there, so I can't really say... I'm a young pup! :cool:

[Nortelbert]

Pick up an old birding book for the answer. God awful clarity.

I was just looking through some old National Geographics... the image quality is not quite as good as one thinks they remember :-)

[tony fanning]

[quote=sblais;3309995]I'm assuming something like this:


177901

:lol::lol::lol:
fair enough!

[Ken Cravillion]

Fast lenses! For weddings the only IS lens I use is the 70-200 2.8IS but it gets used infrequently. My go to's are the 1.4L's and 1.2L's...

For birds the 600 IS takes the cake!

[cdifoto]

being new to wedding photography, what happened in the days pre IS

f/8 and blast the snot out of the B&G with a potato masher flash.

[sapearl]

The world pre-IS? We used these things called TRIPODS for a number of our shots :lol: . You can even still find them in stores ;) .

But seriously, pre-IS it was a matter of bracing yourself against walls, wedging yourself in between pillar and generally holding your breath. Not counting video, I'd never owned an IS lens or body until last year when I got my first dSLR. Somehow we managed to survive, and are here to tell the tale. - Stu

[sapearl]

On a more serious note, up through the late '90's and a couple of years beyond, most serious pro's were shooting MF film with reasonably powerful flashes. A lot of people would drag their shutter around 1/30 sec to allow ambient light to brighten things up a bit, but the flash would freeze the action and eliminate most of not all of any blur. Strobes will typically have a duration of 1/750 sec to perhaps as short as 1/50,000 sec. That's the equivalent of a pretty fast shutter speed ;) .

And then digital arrived in full force, making it more economically attractive to dump MF film and go to high MP bodies with fast lens and less use of flash. I still use my flash, primarily in bounce/fill mode, but I do love the IS of my lenses.

.. Did you all have shaky hand syndrome with only half a dozen keepers from a wedding? Or have you all changed style to PJ and sniping your way through a wedding.............

[mmahoney]

f/8 and blast the snot out of the B&G with a potato masher flash.

:lol: :lol:

[Grace]

f/8 and blast the snot out of the B&G with a potato masher flash.
second post in a row to something really funny from you Don! You must have had a good night last night ;)

lol

[sapearl]

Actually it wasn't really TOO hard back in the day, if you were careful. We had some pretty good concerts back during my college days and I was fortunate enough to shoot for the campus paper. That got me into a lot of nice shows.

I had an old Canon FT QL 35mm and the Canon 200mm FL f/3.5 prime lens. That camera had a nice center weighted metering sysem - 12% of the view I believe - and when used with a telephoto could mimic a pretty decent spot meter. Very often the stage lighting could be pretty bright during portions of the show and this obviously worked well to my advantage.

With ASA 400 film - the old Tri-X Pan - you could get solid 1/125 sec @ f/5.6 exposures when they had the spots cranked up. That lens was no where near as heavy as my 70-200 f/2.8 IS, but if you braced yourself well you could get some excellent images. I was able to get a lot of nice front page shots. :D

[sblais]

Actually it wasn't really TOO hard back in the day, if you were careful. We had some pretty good concerts back during my college days and I was fortunate enough to shoot for the campus paper. That got me into a lot of nice shows.

I had an old Canon FT QL 35mm and the Canon 200mm FL f/3.5 prime lens. That camera had a nice center weighted metering sysem - 12% of the view I believe - and when used with a telephoto could mimic a pretty decent spot meter. Very often the stage lighting could be pretty bright during portions of the show and this obviously worked well to my advantage.

With ASA 400 film - the old Tri-X Pan - you could get solid 1/125 sec @ f/5.6 exposures when they had the spots cranked up. That lens was no where near as heavy as my 70-200 f/2.8 IS, but if you braced yourself well you could get some excellent images. I was able to get a lot of nice front page shots. :D

Wow Stu, that must have been a LONG time ago! :p :lol:

[sapearl]

Sure was..... way back last century ;) . We even had to use stop-down metering on some of our SLR's.

Wow Stu, that must have been a LONG time ago! :p :lol:

[jj1987]

T-R-I-P-O-D.

[sapearl]

...along with monopod, cephalopod (for marine photography) , brick walls, bent knees, bean bag chairs, and car hoods just to name a few more...:D

T-R-I-P-O-D.

[agosling]

I guess the main thing was that we didn't know we were missing out, so we just went ahead and used what we had.

IS is fantastic on longer lens and I really wouldn't want to be without it now, I still don't see huge value in it on lens like the 17-55.

[howzitboy]

i remember shooting weddings in this church that was soo dark, you couldnt see anything. only thing that saved me was when we have a video order,they would bring lights on stands to brighten it up. But, when we shot w/out video, id go f5.6, 1/30 second and guess they look 8 feet away, set lens to about 8 feet and fire away!!! *sigh* those were the days....

[motogeno]

I shoot at 1/30 all the time on my shorter lenses with no flash and get sharp results with no IS - and I get plenty of motion blur (sometimes that's a good thing) at 1/30 so I can't see ever needing IS to get 1/15. But, I have the 70-200 2.8 NonIS and I'd love to sell it to anyone who wants it so that I can get the IS version (PM me if you are interested). I use the 70-200 a lot and it is one of the finest made, but for the lowlight of weddings it's not realistic to keep your shutterspeed at 1/200. I really find it hard to believe though that not having IS made any difference at all to photographers working for National Geographic while they are shooting in daylight and can be stationary and use a tripod.