Canon Lens - "normal" vs Image Stabilising

[Podie]

Rude Girl said:

Who is TD?

It's MY thread dammit... I paid £5k for it..!

[joust]

ThatPhilBrettGuy said:

No no NO! Ok, it's true on the 100-400IS and other lenses that have dual mode IS, but the 75-300IS doesn't and it should be switched off for panning. Slowly pan it (or the 28-135IS) with the shutter button half pressed and watch the horrid jumpy result. That said, it’s well worth having. The extra stop or two it gives you definitely gets you low light shots you couldn’t have got before.

Ah - if you read EOS magaizine they tell you to NOT do that with an IS.

The IS function will sort out ~<2 degrees of movement. If you therefore pan then it'll go horribly wrong.

My 28-135 has the same issue, just the way that it works (it's quicker, but only has ~1 degree of correction) means it's less noticable, but it's still the same.

Although I've yet to try the 70-200L USM IS, it suffers from similar issues as the 75-300USM IS, although granted the 75-300 doesn't have 1&2 IS modes, 1 still works with careful thought.

If you think about it, the key is to "pre focus" on where you want the car to be. If you focus on the tarmac that is at the leading edge of where you want the DOF to be, then hold the trigger in until the IS stops running, then pan, when you finally hit the shot the IS will spring back into life, removing those horrible "vertical" issues you have with panning.

I've played a lot with a 75-300IS and believe me, if you follow the advice above (EOS mag, I think in December 04 had more) then it really does work.

Sure it's not as "clever" as the later ones, but you can still get stonking panned results with it....

J

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Hhhmmm interesting. I wonder what's really going on? Pre focus, yup that's the way to go but the IS stuff? IS just kicking in for the shutter press? Nah, can't be that can it? 28-135IS users will have noticed the odd sideways jump and back when IS kicks in so if that occurs when the shutter is press bad things must result.

I'm not saying the technique doesn't work, but my guess would be that really IS isn't kicking in at all and it's all down to good panning.

Like I said, interesting stuff!

[Podie]

Hoping to take delivery of the lens this afternoon, so I'll take some pictures and see how I get on with it.