Vibration Reduction and shutter speeds

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Dale_tem

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Vibration Reduction is to reduce handshake etc. but at what shutter speeds does it have any effect?

Is it down to the 1/30 or does it help with faster shutter speeds?

I normally shoot around the 1/200 speed or faster with wildlife so I'm thinking that the VR won't make any difference at this speed.

Does it help with longer lenses at faster shutter speeds or is the length of lens irrelevant? ie at 20mm focal length, a shutter speed of 1/100 needs no help, but If I'm taking a shot at 300mm at 1/100 would it help?
 
Dale_d3100 said:
Vibration Reduction is to reduce handshake etc. but at what shutter speeds does it have any effect?

Is it down to the 1/30 or does it help with faster shutter speeds?
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Shutter speed it's irrelevant! It works at any shutter speed! It helps taking better pictures at lower shutter speeds eg; in low light situations, if u used a 1/15 shutter speed hand held with no IS the image will look blury but if u took the same shot with the IS turned on it will be fine that doesn't mean that the IS will not work at higher or lower shutter speeds..
 
My experience is that the VR slows down the auto focus, not a problem for many things, but a real pain for fast s/s sports photography (so I turn mine off then).
 
The rule of shutter speed should equal 1/35mm equiv focal length still applies. So if you're shooting at 1/100 on a 35mm (50mm equiv on your D3100) lens, there should be no shake either with or without IS/VR.

However, shooting at 1/100 on a 300mm (450mm on your D3100) lens will almost always give a very blurred image without a tripod, whereas with a decent image stabilisation/vibration reduction (Canon/Nikon's different names for the same thing) system you're more likely to get usable image.

Shutter speed does subtly affect how useful the IS/VR can be, but generally just assume that IS/VR is only really necessary when shooting at speeds slower than the 1/focal length rule would require e.g. 1/<50 on a 50mm equivalent lens, 1/<300 on a 300mm equivalent lens.
 
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Excellent, thats what I thought Ksanti :)

I'm looking at the sigma 500mm lenses and trying to decide on 2 lenses which fall within my budget a 150-500mm with stabilisation or a 50-500mm which is technically a better, but doesn't have stabilisation. So if I'm shooting at speeds slower than 1/500 at 500mm I will benefit from stabilisation.
 
Well yes, but really at that end of the spectrum the 1/focal length rule gets a bit hazy as the lenses start getting really quite heavy and you might want to support them anyway, and once you start supporting lenses (on beanbags, monopods, tripods etc.) the vibration reduction systems aren't useful any more.

With reference to the 50-500 and 150-500, I haven't used either but I think the consensus is go with the 50-500; the 150-500 is pretty soft and won't produce any "Wow" images, whereas the 50-500 is much more capable of those.
 
dale if your shooting at 300mm so your min shutter speed without vr should be 1/450sec so 500th sec on a nikon and if the lens has vr and maygive 3 stops, that means you can go down to 1/60th sec and get sharp shots.
whilst panning for cars or birds a turn it off, a few people say it slows the af down but it doesnt, what they mean is the time it takes to settle down can cost them a shot, there are ways around that but we wont go there.
these wer done just now at 1/20th sec hand held, with a lsight breeze.
os off,.
SJB_4775.jpg


SJB_4776.jpg

os on.
SJB_4774.jpg


SJB_4777.jpg
 
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scottthehat said:
whilst panning for cars or birds a turn it off, a few people say it slows the af down but it doesnt, what they mean is the time it takes to settle down can cost them a shot, there are ways around that but we wont go there.
these wer done just now at 1/20th sec hand held, with a lsight breeze.
os off,.
Click to expand...


Please go there Scott I would be interested
 
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