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Panny 45-200 on Pen. IS in camera or in lens?

tashley

Subscriber Member
In short and in an idle moment I tried both. I took sets of five shots with IS in body then same subject and same exposure details with IS in lens instead. I did this at full zoom only, but tried targets ranging from 200 yards to several miles.

I won't bore you with the shots (in fact I've already deleted them!) but they came down in favour of IS in camera. There was a slight but consistent performance advantage done this way (shutter speed was 1/125th throughout).

However, there's a rub: I found that there's less shutter lag when doing IS in lens.

You pays your money and you takes your chance...

Hope that helps someone!

Tim
 

Brian Mosley

New member
I've tested the PL 14-150mm OIS on the E-P1 and found that using both, surprisingly doesn't lead to much degraded performance over using either method alone.

Previously, the two methods engaged at once would cause 'fighting' - there's a video on youtube somewhere showing this problem.

I think the in-body stabilisation method is at it's most effective at the longer focal lengths. Maybe worth repeating the tests at a shorter focal length too.

Cheers

Brian
 
R

Ranger 9

Guest
Over at Photo Club Alpha, this guy tried using a Sigma lens' in-lens IS and a Sony Alpha body's in-body IS at the same time. Results were, um, not good.

Of course, that was with a completely different camera and lens. So maybe what we can learn from the difference between his experience and Brian's is that it's risky to generalize that "in-lens IS is better" or "in-body IS is better."

Incidentally, he made an interesting distinction, noting that in his experiments, the Sigma's in-lens IS was better at lowering the threshold for shutter speeds at which you could get an acceptably sharp picture. On the other hand, the Sony's in-body IS seemed to be better for assuring critically sharp pictures at higher shutter speeds.

In other words, it appears from his results that the Sigma lens' IS is more optimized for reducing big, slow wiggles, while the Sony's in-body IS is more optimized for reducing small, fast wiggles.

If that's a generalizable statement, then then there might be magical camera/lens combinations in which combining lens IS and body IS would produce better results than either one alone.
 

Mike Hatam

Senior Subscriber Member
Thanks Tim - this is very helpful, as I've wondered about this comparison myself when using the Pany lenses with the E-P1.
 
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