VR for wildlife: is it worth the risk?

[Wayne]

I have been playing with my 400/2.8 on a mono the past few days, shooting small birds at some distance, they barely fill the focus point in the VF. I find it is very hard to stabilise such a lens on a mono for such small subjects even with VR, and without it, near impossible. I need a gimbal for these little things....

[mbundock]

I've been trying to shoot birds with an EF 500, hand held, with IS on. I know a gimbal on a tripod or a monopod are useful, but not always feasible due to extra weight. I've been building up my 'Holding' time slowly, I'll probably end up with one arm like a Gorillas'! I for one am all for IS, any help is useful!!

[Patagonia]

Good discussion here, to put some more spice I can comment that in my last trip I found that VR on my new 70-300 Nikon Lens idoubles as anexcelent set of "binoculars" for spoting and enyoing wildlife, you focus and after a few moments the feel is as if you canched from being looking from a motorboat to looking from a big cargo ship, all the shake desappears....

With the VR on the Nikon 16-85 I notice absoluteley no difference up to the point now I doubt if it has ever worked!!

[arthurking83]

You won't notice it on shorter focal lengths as much as you will on say longer focal lengths.

it still works, but the obvious difference/advantages are at lower shutter speeds(as the focal length decreases), and usually in the images themselves and not so much through the viewfinder.

If you want to confirm that the VR feature is working, you should hear a small click noise(in the lens) as you half press the shutter button.

Also, to confirm the effectiveness of VR at say shorter focal lengths you woudl take two or more snaps of a static scene(wall, door, anything that is not going to move) and shooting for example at 16mm you woudl set the shutter speed at approximately 1/5s and compare the VR shots with the non VR shots.. all handheld of course.

[Max]

wow, valuable information here. But i think one point is being missed. VR or IS or in camera stabilisation is just another tool in your arsenal. Just like checking wind direction as many birds will take off into the wind. Line up sun set and west wind and you make for great light and hopefully a great shot.

How far do you screw up iso to maintain fast shutter speed? At some point some compromise is involved. As you often increase exposure shooting up into the light VR IS etc just helps sometimes and doesn`t other times, that`s all.

[fabian628]

The only thing i can say about the image stabiliser being a problem might be first aquisition of the target. However, since every target is different in its own way, it is difficult to get a controlled test.

I did feel i had problems when I saw a target, swung the lens into motion and saw the object in the viewfinder, and half pressed, the lens was still in motion, and the IS swung into ctivity causing me to lose sight of the target in the viewfinder. So unless you are violently swinging the lens and turning on IS at the same time it should be too much of a problem.
At fast-ish shutter speeds (1/400s) and faster using a 300mm lens i dont turn the IS on becuase of the small time it takes to start up.

[ecopix]

Coming back to this thread after many months of photography and now going through images on the computer, I can confirm that my VR, VC, IS definitely do degrade the image if used inappropriately. So I've made a rule for myself: only switch it on if shooting handheld at or below one stop slower than the reciprocal of the focal length. At higher speeds, the sharp non-stabilised images are sharper than the sharp stabilised images. Often the difference is slight, perceivable in the 'compare images' function of ACDSee or similar, but worth it. The danger zone seems to be around the reciprocal of the focal length, but can even be visible at 1/1000th with long focal lengths. Controlled tests have confirmed this.
My lenses are 100-400 Canon, 70-300 SP Tamron and 80-400 Nikkor, plus an 18-105 Nikkor. I can't comment on others.
What a great thread this has turned into!
Wayne

[Kym]

This is an interesting take on SR http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=19647176