Good Morning all,

I learned fast with my gl2 that using os while on a tripod was a mistake as it caused that searching vibrating look. Shooting hand held was no problem most of the time.

With my xl2 I use my 100 to 400 lens regularly. I was wondering if you gentlemen use the os when shooting off a tripod at larger magnifications.

If you do, do you ever get any of the os image effect.

Shooting hand held with this lens is pretty difficult and produces rough stuff, so if you can't use it on a tripod it makes me wonder if one reall needs it for most wildlife video shooting where high magnification comes into play!!

Do you feel that Os causes any negative effects to your images?


What is your advice in using it?

Dale, under most circumstances I shoot with the OIS (optical image stabilisator) to OFF! Remember that the OIS is made for still images. When you do a pan or tilt with the OIS enabled you will notice that the stabilisator is working against your movement and this will most often ruin your footage!
There is only a few times when I actually have enabled (set to ON) the OIS. And that is when I have shoot something where both the target and surrounding where totally still but wind have caused the lense and camcorder to vibrate. Under such conditions using OIS have helped me to get decent footage!

I use it when I'm filming clouds from an airplane. It's freaky steady. Even though it looks like everything is moving, on playback it's nice and steady.

You lose a little resolution even with optical OIS but it's not a bad price when you consider you may not have a useable shot without it.

thanks gentlemen!!

I will remember these sugggestions.


Kevin, I plan to do some shooting out of a plane this fall (wife gets her private licences in a week or so).

I am curious how you actually shoot out of the plane. Out the window, rremove a door, etc.

Dale,

Well, commercial flights obviously I have to shoot through the window.

Allot of time I don't shoot because the window is so cruddy or scratched.

Coming home from LA this month I had a great window and shot a bunch of cloudscapes.

Helicopters, I take the door off and put a foot on the skid and shoot out the side.

You lose a little resolution even with optical OIS but it's not a bad price when you consider you may not have a useable shot without it.

How do you lose resolution?

Mike,

I do not know for certain but here is how it seems to me. As the lenses move they reorient the image to the sensor, the lenses can not realign everything perfectly, very close yes, but not being perfect would cause the edgings around any non constant colors to have slightly misaligned edges which would then effect resolution as we perceive it. Kind of how pixelization on objects with lots of lines (a brick wall ex.) as apposed to solid colors. Well maybe thats not a great analogy.

would like to hear more on this!