AFAIK, GS70 has no OIS but ratther EIS that isn't teribly effective according to majority of user reports.

Alex

Peter Waren,

If you are talking about GS100's OIS you shouldn't worry as it is linear motor shift lens system not affected from reduced light or electronic manipulation but just from the physical shake.

The GS70's EIS is automaticaly disabled at light levels when the gain is pushed below 9dB. At 12 dB for exmple the EIS is not working as reported on other forums.

Adding additional glas in front of the original lens reduces more or less the reception of light so that might be a problem and Pana just puts it in it's manual for own safety.

You can easy say if the EIS is disabled as the shake is very obvious at modest zooms. Zoom to 5x and try to hold steady - you can compare how it behaves at different light conditions.

Thanks, folks, this makes a lot of sense. I have the 953 manual, but have been using the GS70 manual as a first read.

I find that the cam is rather difficult to hold steady at any but widest lens settings. Some sort of stable platform is really indicated for any serious shooting....

Peter, are you talking about GS70 or GS100K claiming it is nto convenient for steady handholding ?

Alex

Alex...I am talking about the GS100K...I am not deriding the cam-it is a wonderof technology and Japanese quality--but it's small size makes it hard to hold steady even with the OIS. Have you found it otherwise?

I think Peter is talking about GS100.

I would agree with him that the optical stabilization of this tiny little lens is not of the best. It's not easy to tame the movements so it's "normal" to experience "bouncing" in the 8x-10x range. I also find this frustrating. I didn't find GS70 to have bouncing.
At the full wide I don't have any problem though.

Problem is that for this size lense physical compensation is very tricky.You need very sencitive and fine tuned motors to move the inside lens to compensate.

That's why in other post I complain about the lens size and also I prefer the active prism type of OIS found in higher class cams. This prism is compensating in such way that the ligh/image enters to it's surface exactly at 90 degrees canceling any errors.

In general for this price and given that OIS doesn't degradate image quality I'm happy with GS100.

Yeah, I understand. Hope to test your words guys next week when my little GS100K beauty will reach my hands... :-))


Alex

In my observation, Canon Optura100's OIS is more steady than that of MX5K and GS100.

Peter, the GS100 is "closer" in functionality to the MX5K/953 than the GS70.

Well, there's always.....a tripod!

;-)

Allan, thanks, I learned that the hard way...after printing out 110 pages of the GS70 manual.

It is difficult to imagine that the manual for the GS100k is almost TWICE the page count of the 953 manual! Is it that there are so many additional features on the GS100k? Or does the manual do a better job of explaning the various functions? One of these days, we'll have a translation I suppose.

Allan, I wouldn't be suprised to reveal Canon's OIS would be better in comparable cameras.
Canon's OIS technology is actually the most advanced among others and this is well known fact.

Regards, Alex

Warren only 150 of 212 pages of the Jap manual are relevant to the cam itself. The rest explains the software package contained in the supplied CD-R, which you basically don't need (except for the basic drivers which you can install manually), because they are in Japanese and won't work properly with PCs running on English OS.

Between the Jap and English manual, yeah, there are more info contained in the Jap version..including how to clean that sensitive surface at the back of the LCD...some of them are rather trivial though.