Are your tripod pictures blurry? Image Stabilization and Tripods

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There has been a long standing debate about whether or not the image stabilization switch on a lens or camera should be in the "on" or "off" position when shooting on a tripod. I decided that a real world test was needed to finally put this question to rest, as all the arguments seem to be based purely on guesswork and theory. This video discusses the problem, shows my field tests and the results achieved. If you shoot long exposures, the results are a must see.
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Опубликовано:

6 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 48

@Sutterjack 4 года назад

Good points - I shot some video recently on a tripod and painfully learned about IS in my lens. Very important to be aware and do your tests

@kennedypollard467 7 лет назад

Great job! Very helpful and clear.

@juanpablosaenz7719 7 лет назад

Thank you for making this video. I was about to throw my camera across the room haha

@WesHardaker 7 лет назад

Please don't do that!!! ha ha.

@PPCFindingStudio 4 года назад

Thanks for this important and very very useful information. God bless you.

@birdie399 8 лет назад

Great work. Very interesting results. I expected to use one rule for all lenses.

@WesHardaker 8 лет назад

+birdie399 Glad you enjoyed it. I was surprised by the results myself!

@johndc7446 2 года назад

Interesting. I am also thinking how it would come out with a camera that has an in body image stabilzation. Maybe the lens image stabilization has more possibility in creating this issue than the cameras own image stabilization.

@WesHardaker 2 года назад

I've wondered that too. I don't have a body image stabilization camera to try. It may vary per brand and model too though

@JacekPilarski 7 лет назад

Thanks for the video, I have 70-200 IS II and have the same thing with IS fighting tripod giving me blurred image. Turning it off helps. Cheers

@WesHardaker 7 лет назад

Jacek Pilarski awesome! So glad it helped your image quality!

@artyfly100 6 лет назад

Thanks, straight to the point and useful

@claytonroot806 Год назад

I have a Canon SuperZoom SX60HS so all the Image Stabilization is being controlled through the Menu on the Camera itself, i,e. I have no Lens Switch for IS. So shortly after getting the camera, I'm shooting photos of the Moon and with this camera's 65x Zoom I had a "Full Screen" shot long before full telephoto. It is my understanding that the Image Stabilization on this camera is ONLY FUNCTIONAL when actually taking the exposure. So I'm set up and the image on the camera's display looks fantastic so I set a 2 second delay and fired away. When I then viewed the captured images they DID NOT look as crisp as when previewing the shot. Obviously, excited to try out my new camera I didn't even investigate the Image Stabilization function but later discovered on-line that this was probably causing my somewhat blurry images. I've yet to retry a similar shot with Image Stabilization turned off but have a bunch of Macro Focus shots coming up so will try it both ways. It's interesting to see that SOME lenses appear to be significantly negatively affected by having the IS turned on when using a tripod and others not so much.

@WesHardaker Год назад

When you try a good comparison, I'd love to hear the results so come back and post your findings!

@solarsynapse 4 года назад

Nice, actual testing! I have found that you also can't move on the ground at all with a long lens. Any vibration in the ground, you moving, animals, cars, machines, gophers (ha), anything will cause vibration. Attach a laser pointer to the tripod pointed at the ground and move around. You will see it. Even a mechanical shutter will cause vibration.

@WesHardaker 4 года назад

Yep, and not only that but try taking a long exposure picture of the ocean with crashing waves. The waves will nicely blend. So will everything else in the picture as your tripod jiggles.

@Eigil_Skovgaard 2 года назад

Good principle.

@jirirot Месяц назад

How's about monopod & panning?

@hsken5608 7 лет назад

That was very usefull, I have a sigma 150-600mm Contempary I used to leave it always on, with no problem and recently updated the lens and programmed the custom settings to use a more agressive IS and whent out for the first time in the field and was lucky to find a Buzzard and get close and take some good shots using a tripod, but when I looked at them, they all have this strange blur even at 1/800s and faster, didn't understand at first, but must be the IS. Thanks I will try this method to confirm this and try if problem is the same with the 3 settings for OS: the Dynamic view mode, Standard and moderate viewmode.

@WesHardaker 7 лет назад

Super glad you found it so useful and you got some real-world benefit out of it!

@lorenzell3104 2 года назад

This is great, because upgrading to image stabilized lenses might be a waste, depending on the type of photography you do.

@WesHardaker 2 года назад

Ha! I hadn't considered that. If you always shoot from a tripod, you might be right!

@aerospace8 6 лет назад

Thanks a lot really I was going crazy .. My lens is Sigma 18-250 and OS was turned on.. all my long exposure photos were blurry and didn't know why until I watched this and turned it off then it's fine now.. That was really helpful thanks again

@WesHardaker 6 лет назад

Super glad it was helpful to you!

@ArcanePath360 2 года назад

People always say turn the IS off, but I always find most of the time my pictures come out less blurry with it on, even when I go to 1/2000th sec it can be really shaky at 600mm

@WesHardaker 2 года назад

Well certainly my point in the video is to try and determine yourself what is best for your equipment is key.

@ArcanePath360 2 года назад

@@WesHardaker I think I figured out the problem.... my tripod sucks with the weight I've put on it. Might be time to get a Manfrotto

@WesHardaker 2 года назад

@@ArcanePath360 Actually, you bring up an interesting point. Certainly when you change tripods I'd be tempted to test everything again. But I hadn't considered trying it with and without a weight pulling down on the tripod. Especially if it's a swinging weight it could have an interesting impact.

@ArcanePath360 2 года назад

@@WesHardaker With the weight, I was referring to the heavy lens weighing about 2kg. My tripod doesn't seem to be up to the job, unless I fully push in the feet and centre column. Just been taking more pics of the moon tonight. With the tripod more stable now and the ball head off to one side, it's a lot sturdier, and IS off did work better I think, but was really hit and miss. It's difficult to tell when clouds occasionally mist up your shot and make it look like motion blur. I would say my further tests are inconclusive. I do know that the IS doesn't always give good results when I'm leaning the lens against something and it's better turned off with a high shutter rate

@petertrahan9785 2 года назад

I heard that IS automatically disables itself on images taken with shutter speeds longer than 1 second. If true, that would make your tests invalid.

@WesHardaker 2 года назад

That's a good point to consider, but as I mentioned in the video it almost certainly depends on the lens (at least, and potentially the camera though less likely with common DSLRs that I know of). Anyway, if lenses do that, yes it would mean that my tests were inconclusive if I couldn't tell a difference and that it might be the IS auto turning off. However, for the lens I used in this video it clearly showed a difference, which to me proved that this lens definitely didn't turn off IS.

@mxxmauuhan3597 6 лет назад

Should we turn on the VR if camera mounted on Tripod but its windy out there !?

@WesHardaker 6 лет назад

M Mohan that's an excellent question and I'd have to do studies both in wind and without to test it. It maybe that the wind adds enough vibrations for SOME lenses to fix the VR/IR so it works better with it on again. I suspect every lens is different, which is what I show in this video: you need to test each lens.

@TheMrBennito 7 лет назад

that's the way I like it, thanks Wes! just 1 question: would this test in your estimation somewhat compare to a test where I shoot handheld from a car window, using the lower part of the window frame as arm support to keep my body & cam as steady as possible? I could do your test as well, of course and I will. I would like to know how my Panasonic FZ2500(hybrid, so 1 -fixed- lens) performs with and w/o IS on. This is about shooting stills, with maximum focal length (+900mm digital zoom).

@WesHardaker 7 лет назад

TheMrBennito the whole point of my video is that you have to test each combination to be sure of they perform. I could see your proposed test going either way since if it is hand on one end, IS should be active for that part but if the lens is resting on the window, that's where vibrations may conflict. My guess is since it isn't clamped down it should probably be on. But again, I'd test to be sure. Good luck! Interesting question.

@TheMrBennito 7 лет назад

you're right. Implying I would have to do 4 tests. why not :)

@ph5740 Год назад

But what about IBIS? you only tested lens stabilization

@WesHardaker Год назад

True, but if you note in my conclusion: all lenses and cameras would need to be tested as each is different. The software and equipment per combination needs testing, so even if I had tested one camera with IBIS, it wouldn't necessarily match another camera (or even another firmware version potentially for that matter). So the conclusion remains the same: test all combinations that YOU use.

@froznfire9531 4 года назад

So to conclude, it depens on the elsn if you need to turn it off or can keep it on?

@WesHardaker 4 года назад

To conclude, don't believe one answer as truth and test your equipment and your tripod together. The answer for one person may be different than yours.

@twotgfltandahalf 4 года назад

Just as Wes answered, it's best to test your lenses. All my Fuji lenses benefit from turning IS off on a tripod. ONE of my Nikkor lenses didn't care at all, the rest wanted IS off. I nearly botched a shot just a day ago (hence, me being here) where an entire session of shooting a commercial building had unsharp images. Thankfully, the target platform and format rendered the unsharpness invisible, so I didn't have to go back and reshoot. 😁

@amanieux 5 лет назад

cant the algorithm detect we are on a tripod and turn OIS on/off in real time ? no shake for more than 500ms then we are on a tripod !

@WesHardaker 5 лет назад

The programmer side of knows its likely possible and have had the same question. I suspect in the future we may see such optimizations but as of this time I don't know of any system that does such intelligence today.

@stevepseudonym445 5 лет назад

Why would something intended to improve stability activate at all if the camera isn't moving? I'd figure the system should simply detect stability/movement and apply stabilization *if* necessary. If IS causes pictures to be blurry when the pictures are sharp with IS turned off that tells me that there's a more general problem with how IS works. Maybe it's the algorithm, maybe it's the equipment, or maybe it's the design (for example the algorithm might be doing exactly what it was intended to do).

@WesHardaker 5 лет назад

I think it's a much more subtle problem than that. There likely *is* some shake on a tripod, but the algorithm is overcompensating the other direction expecting to be worse than it is. Sensor accuracy of any time is never zero, thus it's unlikely that it would detect zero shake for N seconds, but rather "small". I agree that they could likely improve the algorithm, but remember that these are not high end processing devices. They're aiming for simple and fast. And any time you optimize for one direction (detecting a tripod), you'll like make a mistake in the other direction (sometimes thinking you're on a tripod when you're not). If you had the best IS accuracy for hand-held and assumed that the user could turn off the IS switch when on a tripod, that would be a reasonable design decision if you were trying to maximize for hand-held shake reduction.

@kevins8575 2 года назад

You took images of highly movable grasses. Even a slight puff of wind would cause blur in a 30 second exposure. And you were walking around the area of the tripod. I would not accept these results as fact.

@WesHardaker 2 года назад

Greetings Kevin. Your point is perfectly valid if all that I was looking during my tests was the strands of tall grasses, etc. I selected the grasses for the video since they're sharp and distinct and easy for viewers to see the differences in even with youtube video compression and other video artifacts possibly getting in the way. Everyone should always look at everything within the focal plane, like I did, and take multiple example shots, like I did, when testing your own equipment. But I'm afraid you entirely missed the bigger point of my message: you should test your own equipment and not take any general statement as fact. You absolutely should not accept my results as fact for your equipment as in the video I showed clearly that results differ based on lens and camera IS technologies in play. BTW, I agree that remaining still while the shots were taking (and using a timer and/or shutter release starting with the mirror up) is also critical. Which is why I wasn't "walking around" either.