Have you ever thought about 5d mk iii w/ built in IS?

<p>just occured to me if they ever build a Canon DSLR with a built in IS incorporating canon's newest IS technology. that would be darn nice! this will have the option to have IS on any lens canon has. if the lens have already an IS then theres a custom function to choose either the lens IS or Camera. must be hella expensive though but eii i think the sony guys are already doing it why not canon</p>

<p>what are your thoughts? good idea or bad?</p>

<p>"why not canon" - cuz Canon wants to sell you IS lenses.</p>

<p>I'd rather have it in the lens because you're going to have the lens longer than the body. Its better to pay the premium once for the lens than have to pay it every time you upgrade cameras. On one hand, I guess that's got its downsides too, because if they come out with some kinda 6-stop IS, you'll still be stuck with the old version. It is a plus to be able to see the IS working, especially at longer focal lengths.</p>

<p>1) In camera IS works best for shorter lenses. For long lenses, in-body stabilization is very much less useful</p>

<p>2. Canon would like to sell everyone new IS lenses</p>

<p>3. Sony and pentax aren't stealing market share with in body IS. </p>

<p>Until 3 and 1 are reversed and 2 is no longer true, lens IS will contine to dominate sensor IS. </p>

I've seen exactly one somewhat systematic IS test (at slrgear). At 300mm (35mm-equivalent), they tested a body-based system (Olympus E520) and a lens-based system (Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS). For a fairly steady shooter, body-based gave 2.1 stops of improvement in hand-holdable shutter speed, while lens-based managed 2.3 stops. For a shaky shooter, the improvements were 2.6 and 2.8 stops respectively. So the lens-based was a bit better, but hardly earth-shaking ;-). And at 100mm equivalent, the body-based gave 2.7 stops to both shooters, while the lens-based only managed 1.9 and 2.3 stops. (The real benefit of lens-based IS is that it can help with framing. In the future, with electronic viewfinders becoming more popular and sophisticated, even that advantage will disappear.)

<p>

So I'd say that (1) is at least questionable, assuming you consider 300mm reasonably long. And based on the numbers <a href="http://www.photoscala.de/Artikel/DSLR-Welt-im-Wandel">here</a>, I'd say that (3) isn't necessarily true with regards to Sony. Of course, they might be stealing more share with high-resolution full-frame sensors than they are with body-based IS, but one way or the other, they are taking market share. (2) of course is eternally true.

<p>

I think one of Canon or Nikon will eventually cave and add in-body IS. (They will also hail it as a wonderful technical breakthrough.) The other will cave six months after that.

<blockquote>

<p>In camera IS works best for shorter lenses. For long lenses, in-body stabilization is very much less useful</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You hear something like this time to time but oddly enough there doesn't seem to be any proof anywhere in the web.</p>

<p>I think only real reason CaNikon sell stabilized lenses is that building in-body IS for 35mm film would have been a bit tricky.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Its better to pay the premium once for the lens than have to pay it every time you upgrade cameras.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Interesting that IS on EF 70-200/2.8 costs $800 but somehow whole stabilized Pentax, Sony and Olympus bodies sell for as little as $400. Also, the only available stabilized 35mm sensor body Sony A900 costs $2700 whereas 5D mkII goes for $3500.<br>

Premium indeed...</p>

<p>Interesting that a non-stabilized 70-200mm f2.8 goes for abotu $500 more than a stabilized Canon 70-200mm f2.8.</p>

<p>Every company has a different idea where to take profit.</p>

<p>That's a Sony 70-200mm f2.8 unstabilized that goes for more than a stabilized Canon...</p>

<p>Discard that 5D mkII price... I don't know what I was thinking, let's take another look.</p>

<p>Sony A900, $2700<br /> 5D mkII, $2700<br /> Nikon D700, $2700<br /> Sony A850, $2000<br /> Still can't see that in-body stabilizer premium.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>As shown in modern "kit" lenses, the IS is coming to cost so little for many lenses that there is not much argument, except for legacy lenses, for putting it in the body rather than in the lens. I don't think that Canon will bother to make body stabilizers outside the P&S type cameras.</p>

<p>But I've been wrong lots of times before when it comes to predicting future Canon behavior based on past Canon behavior. I think they're purposely messing with the heads of us (and the Nikon engineers) who try to follow what they are doing. ;)</p>

<p>I kinda like the "legacy" primes in Canon line-up...</p>

<p>Canon say (can't remember where the reference is - think it was one of their white papers) that IS in a camera body is not technically feasible with the range of lenses they make as the movement required of the sensor would be too large. This may well be true. As an engineer I hate to think of the tolerances required of a system to produce accurate focus on a moving DSLR sensor. I expect Canon and Nikon could make an In-Body IS system if they wanted but I wold also expect it to have all sorts of disadvantages and picky photographers would avoid it in favour of the solid sensor.</p>

<p>Maybe one day.....</p>

<p>Colin, the focal length of the lens is irrelivant. Say we define "unacceptable blur" very generously, and say we're willing to tolerate 4 pixels width of blur. (Do a radius 4 Gausian blur on a test image, it's really blurry, like a pinhole photo, not something you're likely to keep, let alone publish). Now say we define the "problem" as producing a 2 stop improvement in blur. So, in any given shutter time, we've increased the speed we have to cope with by a factor of four, and the total range of motion is now 4 pixels * 4 = 16 pixels. Typical pixels are about 6 microns these days, so the sensor has to move about 16 pixels * 6 microns/pixel = 96 microns, or about 0.1mm.</p>

<p>Where it all starts to break down is at longer focal lengths. If the old 1/fl rule holds for exposure, we get about 1/300 sec when using a 300mm f4 (a reasonable "hand holdable" lens) and the two stop improvement puts us down at 1/80 sec. So the sensor stabilizer has to move the sensor at a speed of 0.1mm / (1/80 sec) or 8mm/sec. Of course, the natural question is "what are we photographing with a 300mm f4 that moves so slowly you can shoot it at 1/80 sec", because image stabilizers don't do anything about subject motion...</p>

<p>Focus is also irrelivant, because the motion occurs in the plane of focus, we're loving left, right, up, and down to catch the moving image, not towards or away from the back of the lens.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>i think the sony guys are already doing it why not canon</p>

</blockquote>

<ul>

<li>Canon got into the game first, back before the death of film. They did stabilization in what, from an optical engineering standpoint, I consider to be about the most sensible way, by moving prisms in the rear of the lens.</li>

<li>Nikon had to avoid Canon patents, so they came up with the idea of moving lens groups. A decentered pair of lenses can alter the overall path of light, but also increases certain aberrations, hence the comments that you frequently see about "strange" bokeh on Nikon VR lenses only when the VR is on.</li>

<li>Minolta got into the game even later than Nikon and Canon, and all the really good stuff had been patented. So they came up with the idea of mounting the whole film gate and film rail assembly on an actuator platform and trying to chase the light around by moving the film. Fortunately, this would prove a useful patent to have when digital rolled around.</li>

</ul>

<p>So, as Craig points out, until Nikon and Canon do some market research that say Sony, Olympus, and Pentax are cutting into their market share <strong>because of</strong> camera based stabilization, you're not likely to see it from Nikon or Canon. Which is a pity, because I own some of the small handful of lenses for which body stabilization makes sense, an 85mm f1.4 and 135mm f2.0. Only need a 2 stop bump on those to get them into the 1/30 sec hand-holding range, and that's great for portrait subjects. A real boon, since I love candlelit portraits, anywhere from an intimate single candle, to a couple of 3 or 5 candle candelabrae, to a 200 candle set that looks like a "flashback" scene from the old "Kung Fu" television series.</p>

<p>Joseph,</p>

<p><em><strong>'the focal length of the lens is irrelivant'</strong></em><br>

<strong><em></em></strong><br>

....not according to Canon. Have a look here about half way down where the subject is discussed in this Canon White Paper. (summarising... can be done for short focal length lenses but defelctions required are too great for long focal lengths.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/public_files/Canon_Rebel_XTi_White_Paper.pdf">http://www.robgalbraith.com/public_files/Canon_Rebel_XTi_White_Paper.pdf</a></p>

<p> </p>