Image stabilisation in camera bodies

In another place someone is saying Canon and Nikon are conning the public into paying a fortune for lenses, and most other manufacturers get much better and more effective (more stops) image stabilisation by moving the sensor.

Any comments?

To them I say, Don't hate the playa', hate the game.

Both Canon and Nikon say the opposite. Most other manufacturers also don't have to worry too much about how well stabilization works on twelve pound lenses like the 400mm f/2.8.

I forgot..someone remind me whose on top and what color of lens do you almost exclusively see at sporting events etc...

I've never seen a thorough test (I'd love to conduct one myself) but I think it's fairly reasonable to expect in lens and in body to perform fairly equally up to a point. I do expect the in lens approach to be more effective for telephoto lenses however.

I've certainly never seen anything convincing that says in-body stabilization via sensor shift is more effective than in-lens. However it has its advantages of course.

Since you have both a 24-105 and a 100-400 I will pose this to you. When you have the 24-105 on your camera set at 24mm and you move the camera body a smidge, say a normal shake-like movement, how much does the image you see in the viewfinder move? Not much, really. Now, if you put the 100-400 on there and zoom it out to 400mm and you move the camera body a little bit you are looking at something completely different. It is just like shooting a gun, if you are shooting long distances (kind of like taking a picture at 400mm) then moving the barrel of the gun a little bit makes you miss by several feet. So even a tiny bit of shake with a long lens is going to require a good bit of movement from the stabilizer to save the photo, but with a short lens on the movement isn't that severe, so it doesn't require much of a stabilizer.

The in-body IS is effective, yes, but it is not as good as a stabilization system that is specialized for a certain lens. It is kind of like using one big zoom instead of several primes. Sure the one zoom will take decent pictures, but they won't be as sharp or clear as the picture taken with the prime because the prime is specialized.

Sorry if that didn't make sense, I am tired...

Comparison done here:

http://www.popphoto.co​m …ecial-stop-the-shake.html

Weth wrote in post #6030349
Comparison done here:

http://www.popphoto.co​m …ecial-stop-the-shake.html

I've read that before, unfortunately (and no surprise) the methods, analysis and data presentation prevent any real meaningful conclusions from being drawn in my opinion.

They compare a 200mm lens on the in-body vs a variety of focal lengths on the in-lens (and from lenses of all ages representing many generations of in-lens IS technology from the earliest to latest). Not the way I would have gone about it, but pop photo isn't my first choice for good equipment testing anyway

peterbj7 wrote in post #6030233
In another place someone is saying Canon and Nikon are conning the public into paying a fortune for lenses, and most other manufacturers get much better and more effective (more stops) image stabilisation by moving the sensor.

Any comments?

Peter, the real con is making people think that the in-lens IS systems are ultra complicated and ultra costly to make, thus justifying their huge markup.

The latest generation of inexpensive lenses with in-lens IS shows that it is possible to make the incremental cost virtually nothing (what is the price difference between the old 18-55 and the new 18-55 IS, $50 retail?).

Having shot Pentax before I became a Canon shooter all I can say to in camera IS is "balogne". It's kind of a dumb system if you ask me because it's utterly worthless for sports IMO compared to having the 2-stage IS system in the Canon or Nikon lenses.

peterbj7 wrote in post #6030233
In another place someone is saying Canon and Nikon are conning the public into paying a fortune for lenses, and most other manufacturers get much better and more effective (more stops) image stabilisation by moving the sensor.

Any comments?

From the prices on B&H:
Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS - $1700
Sony 70-200 f2.8 - $1800

Which company is ripping off who here? Pay for the IS in the lens from Canon and you save $100 over the Sony equivalent. For the lens to be the exact same construction, ie no IS in either lens, the price on the Canon drops to $1200.
I'd rather pay $500 to Canon for putting an IS in a lens as opposed to paying Sony and extra $600 for the Sony badge.
As to which is better, there are to many versions around to give a straight answer. Some body IS systems are going to be better than some lens systems and some lens systems are going to be better than some body IS systems.

Canon published a White Paper not too long ago explaining why they chose to go with in-lens IS. Bottom line with that the two companies have two different approaches. I prefer Canon's line of thinking. You may prefer Sony's. Different strokes for different folks.

Did anyone on here take a class in physics? Gosh-O Mighty if you did how in the hell can anyone say in camera is the end all?

The big advantage of in-lens IS is that you can actually see the effects of stabilization in the viewfinder.
Not so with in-camera IS.

^True that. I actually did a thorough test once while work at Circuit City. On the tele end IS with Canon and Nikon is beyond far superior than Sony's or Olympus' crap in body. I Use Nikon's and Canon's 70-300 IS and then a Sony 300 lens and I forget which Olympus lens it was since they have the odd 2x crop in their cameras.

Canon and Nikon were highly effective and this was testing both general handheld and me leaning against the counter for stabilization. Not to mention the grain from the Sony when I kept boosting the ISO.