G9 IBIS

It's past bedtime, but I just thought I'd put up one example of the G9's IBIS, which is the first thing I've been playing with—

This is a wider view of the whole scene, taken at 32mm FOV equivalent. I tried to match the "subjective brightness" of the scene so you can sorta tell how dark it was. There's just one light on, over the sink at the other side of the room.

So, pretty dark.

This is not the same file—this is a small center crop of a shot at 64mm-e. Both of these were taken handheld, without bracing my elbows on anything (although I was sitting down). The kicker? The exposure time in the detail shot was one second.

That's pretty remarkable...for me.

You'll see various claims and various "proofs" around the Internet, but the thing to remember is that everybody's different. Just because some young hero can handhold five seconds with an E-M1 Mark II doesn't mean I could. Really, you can only make comparisons of different cameras with the same operator. I'm not terribly steady any more, so one second is great.

It takes a few weeks of use with a new camera to get a handle on the lowest shutter speeds you can really trust, but, just playing around with the G9 around the house tonight, I'm getting pretty consistently sharp results even at exposure times of 1/2 second and 1 second. (The top picture here is 1/2 sec.) Maybe I'm feeling mellow.

By the way, it rained cats and dogs all afternoon, and this evening we had a thunderstorm, complete with lightning. Really, if you need rain where you are, I'll come and rent a camera. Should do it.

Gotta get to bed....

It'll be raining tomorrow, so I'll have plenty of time to write more.  :-)

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David Evans: "Just for fun, I tried to duplicate your detail shot with my Nikon P900 and found I could get similar anti-shake performance at 1/4 sec. (which surprised me) but definitely not at 1 sec."

William Schneider: "I first encountered image stabilization on my Olympus XZ-1. While I absolutely love IS, I noticed that it made me less careful when hand-holding my other cameras. I started to get shake-induced blur. I've become spoiled and inattentive."

Mike replies: I know what you mean. The same thing happened to me when I started shooting people using high-speed continuous on my Fuji X-T1. Once I realized it was making me lazy, I redoubled my effort to hit the shutter at exactly the right moment, just as if I was shooting with a film camera with an advance lever. And then let Continuous High take a handful more shots after that one.

Comments

[Dave Karp]

I knew it!

We need you in California, by the way.

[Rob Campbell]

My personal rain dance consists of washing the car: works every time; makes the neighbours groan.

Anyway, season's greetings to you and your readers!

Rob

[Arg]

The G9 is sealed, right? ;)

[Omer]

The first photo may have been a test but you obviously composed with care. Rain or not, well done.

[John Krumm]

Well Mike, here in Minnesota we finished up our wet weather and have moved on to first ice and now a little snow, just in time. Might be heading your way.

[PDLanum]

For some of us old guys, hand holding a camera for shutter speeds under 1/60th of a second is a matter of technique. (Kodachrome 25 on anything but a bright sunny day, underexposed by 2/3 an f stop for more dense color/dye) So when getting a camera with IBIS (Pentax K10D with SR) it should have been heaven sent. However, I too became lazy letting the technology attempt to solve a technique issue which resulted in many blurry images.

We humans tend to do seek the lazy way out and technique is the first to go. I continue to use SR, Pentax speak for IBIS, but I remember to hold my elbows in, lean against something or try to shoot like Joe McNally.

Even in the old days I started to move to the next image before the sound made by the camera went silent. IBIS only works when you remember that you don't move during the capture process. I have achieved some pretty interesting results using SR, there's that Pentax term again, when combined with good old fashioned camera handling technique. Technique will enhance technology resulting better results rather than relying on one or the other independently.

[Stephen Scharf]

Just curious, Mike, for a lot of the photography you show on TOP, is there a reason why you can't use a tripod?

I'm starting a professional real estate photography business, and we shoot everything on tripods. With geared heads and Really Right Stuff plates and clamps. Essentially, we make the room into a "locked down set" as they say in the product photography biz, as one typically composites anywhere from 3-6 frames with different lighting into a single photograph (we do a LOT of layer masking).

For example, this rather ordinary breakfast area photo is comprised of 4 ambient and 2 different flash exposures and took me a full 20 minutes to light and shoot. Can't do this with IBIS...gotta have a "locked down set" on a tripod.

[Mark Probst]

Clearly not sharp, but impressive for 13 seconds hand-held without support with a E-M1 Mark II: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ7HzINFGE7/