Panning with IS in portrait mode

Forgive me if this question has been asked a million times before. I don't normally follow this thread but suddenly find myself doing some sports photography. I was shooting lacrosse last weekend and will be shooting soccer this weekend. My question has to do with the dual IS modes of the L-series lenses. In the past, I have always held the camera body in "landscape" mode using IS mode 2 when tracking a subject who is moving from left to right or right to left...to get the benefit of vertical stabilization and turning off the horizontal stabilization. When I started shooting the lacrosse game, I was using the same method. Then at one point, I reoriented the camera body into portrait mode without thinking about it (leaving the lens in IS mode 2). A while later, it occurred to me that this might be a problem, that the vertical stabilization might now be fighting against my panning, and I switched it off. Unfortunately, when going back over the pictures, I couldn't tell for sure when I switched off the IS or when I was panning and when I was relatively still while shooting. I suppose it's possible the lens is smart enough to know its orientation and do the right thing, but I suspect this isn't the case and I really needed to switch off IS when panning in portrait mode. Is that right?

Can you post the picture. I would like to see it.

That's the problem. I took lots of pictures and don't know when I switched off the IS or when I was panning versus staying relatively still. It's not obvious from the pictures, and I couldn't tell if the mode 2 IS was fighting against me or not. I figured others with experience here will know right off the bat.

I was just looking for pannning picture of soccer (IS or no IS). I never seen any before so that's why I was asking.

Someone else will likely chip in on this (and possibly explain it better), but given that most sports photography requires higher shutter speeds (1/400 or higher) to be effective at stopping action, the IS mode on most lenses is really no benefit when you need to shoot high speed sports. The IS will not help you freeze the action and get sharp photos...the higher shutter speed will. I shoot a lot of hockey and I always have my IS off on the 70-200f2.8L. IS is handy in low light situations and low shutter speed situations when you want to be able to pull another stop or two out of the lens.

Cheers!

Chris

cstewart wrote in post #5426811
Someone else will likely chip in on this (and possibly explain it better), but given that most sports photography requires higher shutter speeds (1/400 or higher) to be effective at stopping action, the IS mode on most lenses is really no benefit when you need to shoot high speed sports. The IS will not help you freeze the action and get sharp photos...the higher shutter speed will. I shoot a lot of hockey and I always have my IS off on the 70-200f2.8L. IS is handy in low light situations and low shutter speed situations when you want to be able to pull another stop or two out of the lens.

Cheers!

Chris

Thats great but I dont think it really answers the question. If hes asking about panning, we can assume that the shutter speeds are slow enough to allow panning and that you could use Mode2 IS for it.

Its the same question Ive often wonder myself but never known the answer to. If you rotate a lens 90°, does it know it? If Mode2 normally cancels movement in the Y direction for landscape, when you rotate the lens 90°, that former Y axis is now your X axis which is now your direction of pan. Obviously you dont want to to try and stop you pan...So does it know whats going on?

I had the same question a while back.

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=437213

It does detect the angle of travel. I remembered having read it that it can tell which way you are panning and lock off the other one in mode 2. Just to be certain, I spent 30 seconds on the Canon site and looked at the specs for one of the IS zooms. To quote Canon:

Automatic panning detection automatically turns off the Image Stabilizer in either the horizontal or vertical direction when following moving subjects.

You could probably have found the info in less time than it took to post the question.

Does that Canon quote make sense to you? It didn't to me, and that's why I asked the question here. I figured people had actually done it and knew the answer. Since the camera knows its orientation, I assumed it was smart enough to do the right thing, but it's just as easy to imagine that it wouldn't!

sdipirro wrote in post #5434882
Does that Canon quote make sense to you? It didn't to me, and that's why I asked the question here.

Yes, it makes sense. If you are panning horizontally, it turns off the horizontal correction so that it doesn't 'fight' the pan. Likewise, if panning vertically, it will turn off vertical correction.

If you are in portrait mode, and panning with a subject moving horizontally across your FOV, the camera will read that as 'vertical' panning and correct accordingly.