DVX100's OIS
 

Is there anyone here who has experience with both the GL-1 and DVX100? It could be me or does Canon's OIS on the GL-1 perform better than Panasonic's on the DVX100?!

It's possible, since even EIS varies between model and manufacture...

I've shot with the DVX100 and XL1S and find little difference between the two. The Panasonic OIS seems a little nosier than Canon's. But the GL1/2 is not the XL1 either. I didn't find anything objectionable about the OIS on the DVX100. It's a nice camera from that stand point.

Not that it was bad- just not as effective at stabilizing shots as the Canons. So OIS can degrade the quality?!....is that why they say turn it off while using tripods?.....................

No, you turn the stabilization off on tripods or when panning because it makes some nasty video...

Try it sometime, put your camera on a tripod or pan, and have the stabilization on, and it will try to keep the image right there, and it's really crappy looking...

And EIS degrades quality, not OIS...

I think this may be subject to debate. I have some shots where the camera was firmly mounted on a tripod with no movement for a stationary shot, but I forgot to turn off OIS. On playback I noticed some sporadic movement in the image, and assumed it was the result of the OIS.

OTOH, there are times you might want to use it with a tripod. I shot a performance recently from the back of the theatre, about 100' from the stage. Much of the time I was at full zoom. I have a pretty sturdy tripod, but our 19th century wooden theatre creaks and moves more than you might expect. I was not very happy after shooting the first tape, so I returned and filmed again with OIS turned on. The results were noticeably better. But you can get jerky results sometimes when panning.

Actually my comments apply to the VX-2000 and PDX-10, so your mileage may vary. Like everything else, experiment, note the results, and learn! :-)

Yeah. If the camera is still, and the stabilization is turned on, and there is movement in the footage, especially if it is close, then the EIS or OIS will go nuts trying to compensate for that...

Both OIS and EIS degrade the video. It's just that OIS does it a little whereas EIS does it a lot. But some EIS work far better than others; and I would guess that some OIS work better than others. For example, I've always found the Sony EIS to work much better than the ones on JVCs and Panas; and there has been a lot of talk from people owning both a MX300 and TRV900. Most of them swear that the OIS works better on the TRV900. Being an MX300 owner, I have found the MX300's OIS to work very well. And I found the OIS on the new PV-DV953 (MX5000) to also work very well. I also have used both the PD100A and GL1, but unless I have all these cams in front of me, there's no way for me to tell which works better. And even that is no guarantee.

Well...
 

What's a good way to know it's working. On my DVX100 it's kinda hard to tell. Maybe I'll have to test it on extreme telephoto shots. I'm just wondering if it stabilizes the footage in such a way it's iminantly noticable. Making sure there's nothing wrong my 'my' DVX100's OIS. *darn I'm paranoid* lol

If you want to verify yr OIS (not for EIS) is working, just put some tape on the outer part of the lenshood opening, so that at a given zoom setting you just see it starting vignetting (tape shade). Slightly shake yr can while looking in the viewfinder. If OIS is on and working you should see a variation in the amount of the tape's shade.

So it isn't something that you can neccissarily tell it's on very easily?........ In other words it's not a night and day difference.
I was worried because when I switch the OIS on and off the effect is so incredibly suttle I wasn't even sure it was working correctly.

Frank,

How does OIS degrade image quality?

I have never heard any specific information that says OIS degrades image quality so I am also interested to know if this is true or not.

One thing I do know is that Canon's excellent image stabilization on it's 35mm EOS (still camera) lenses do not degrade image quality whatsoever. It simply compensates for movement through use of a shifting lens and gyro-scope.

also: [pulled from another site] "Note that when using an image stabilized lens on a tripod, you should turn off image stabilization. If you don't do so, you can actually add blur to the image. (A few lenses have a mechanism that prevents this problem.) This is because when image stabilization is on, the special image stabilization lens group is free to move. If it moves while everything else is perfectly stable, blur results. When image stabilization is off, the image stabilization lens group is locked in place so it can't move at all." -- Although this only applies to OIS systems that use in-lens stabilizers, I'm sure the concepts are similar for DV cameras that do it... digitally?