Vibration Reduction compared with handholding (April 2, 2008)

[wolfnowl]

Still relevant today...

http://web.archive.org/web/20080707100746/http://www.imx.nl/photo/technique/vibration_reduction_compare.html

Mike.

[bill t.]

Back in the day I used to think how sharp my hand-held, 1/focal_length Kodachrome exposures were.  When I recently looked at some of those slides through a high-powered loupe, subtle motion blur had crept into many if not most of those images.  I must have stored them incorrectly...in my mind.

[Rob C]

Back in the day I used to think how sharp my hand-held, 1/focal_length Kodachrome exposures were.  When I recently looked at some of those slides through a high-powered loupe, subtle motion blur had crept into many if not most of those images.  I must have stored them incorrectly...in my mind.

That's a distinct possibility; more likely though, and something that has happened to me in the past, is dropping the cassette before having it processed or, perhaps, somebody at Box 14 in Hemel Hempstead doing it for me instead. You just never can tell what goes on when things leave your personal control. You learned to live with these things. The good old days, you see: we were resilient; more so than our films with their dodgy coatings. Hell, even an X-Ray machine scared them and made them blush khaki tans!

Rob C

[NancyP]

There's no question that VR can be a godsend. I have learned to shoot a non-VR 400mm lens on APS-C (Canon 400mm f/5.6L, arguably still the best budget birding lens if you use good technique) . The learning curve for shooting birds in flight was painfully steep, even using shutter speeds of 1/1000 sec. My keeper rate has gone way up since I learned best handheld panning techniques and routinely shoot in high-speed burst mode. If it isn't moving and I can pre-focus, eg, bird on nest, I will use the tripod and wired release whenever possible, even for 1/1000 sec and faster.