Do IS Lenses help resolve rolling shutter and mud horrors?

davidpula

davidpula

Well-known member
I'm considering some Canon L lenses; for now the 70-200 F4 zooms. Does anyone have first-hand experience with comparing such IS and non-IS lenses and are the IS versions worth so much more for video? Or is the difference negligible? Again, I'm only interested in any improvements in video quality, not stills.

thx!
 
if you're mounting this thing on your shoulder, or some sort of support rig when going handheld, the differences @ 70 has no difference from my experience.

The more you zoom in, the more apparent "shake" becomes. I rented both IS and non IS 70-200 lenses to test for myself, and the extra money is definitely worth it if you're doing A LOT of hand held.

If you're doing more stationary/tripod stuff, then you can save the extra 500-600.
 
I've got the Canon 17-55 f/2.8 IS, and when zoomed in near 55mm it makes a BIG difference when handheld. Without IS, I get a ' kind of light vibrating shake, but with IS it's gone. Nice smooth footage with a natural handheld bob and weave but no shake. I also think IS helps reduce 'jello' rolling shutter artifacts which can happen from sudden light jarring bumps, which the IS smooths out.
 
that's what i wanted to know. if it helps reduce jello then i think it's it's a no brainer. eh looks like i'll be dropping $1200 for the IS...
 
I don't see how a lens with IS could improve any of this due to the fact that it is caused by the "rolling shutter" of your cameras CMOS sensor. The mentioned artifacts are inherent to these type of chips (some worse than others). The "jello" you mentioned is caused by rapid panning or something with vertical height moving accross the frame too fast. IS will just help give a steadier handheld shot which should not cause jello in the first place. Just know your cameras limitations on these things and work around them. The only type sensors without these artifacts are ones with "Global Shutters" which are mostly found in CCD type sensors.

maybe this can help explain
http://dvxuser.com/jason/CMOS-CCD/
 
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Well Steve Image Stabilisation DOES improve a certain type of rolling shutter artifact a lot. By taking out the high frequency vibrations at a lens level the rolling shutter gets delivered much smoother frames and therefore much of the wobbly, shakey jello is gone. It's not going to improve fast pans or tilts.
 
IS definitely helps reduce the micro-jitter jello effect. Stuart Mannion's post is right on. The rolling shutter effect happens when the image changes while the shutter is scanning down the frame. The IS lenses stabilize the image and keep it from changing.

They won't have any effect on skew, of course; Steve's right with that, but the rubbery wobble can be slightly contained and controlled by an IS lens.
 
Using a shoulder mount is so important. That alone will take away micro jitters. I don't see why a monopod wouldn't help either although I find them a pain to use for video.
 
Stuart Mannion said:
Well Steve Image Stabilisation DOES improve a certain type of rolling shutter artifact a lot. By taking out the high frequency vibrations at a lens level the rolling shutter gets delivered much smoother frames and therefore much of the wobbly, shakey jello is gone. It's not going to improve fast pans or tilts.
Click to expand...
(sigh) Why didn't Canon just add this feature to the body of the cam.....I don't know.
 
because they made this camera to be a still camera with some neat video features. not the other way around, it was the still photography department that developed the body. Video R&D departments and Still photography departments at Canon work separately.

But because of this happy accident the industry is changing a lot. Panny's 4/3 camera coming out is absolute proof of that.

and if you were to bring up RED in all this too, their current, and new systems coming out technically speaking are DSLRS housed to do video. So it has existed for quite some time now.
 
Do you guys think IS is more crucial in a longer zoom lens like the 70-200L than in for example the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM? Basically, is the jello and rolling shutter problem the same no matter how long or wide the lens is, or is it a global thing irrelevant to focal length because of the sensor?

I'm thinking maybe save a bit on a nice non-IS wide zoom lens and spend the extra money on an IS telephoto zoom.

Thoughts?
 
IS isn't as important the wider you get, but it it still helps. If I had the option I would only purchase IS lenses. Sadly, most fast primes do not have IS.
 
IS/VR WILL help, but only tiny jitters, and wont do anything to negate the quick-pan rolling shutter or bumpy road jello; a steadycam/dolly/tripod will still be needed, and dont expect to get any good action footage.

i just shot an autocross and drift event; the first 5 minutes proved the HDSLR was useless.
 
I have the 70-200 f4 IS. I'd say IS is a must above 100mm. I need a lot more practice before I'm a good camera operator while holding the camera in front of me (I can handhold stills well over the 1/focallength rule). The thing is, at 200mm with IS, you get actual usable video (as in almost shake free) without any rig. Just the bare camera plus lens. Turn the IS off and useless shake happens.

Mind you, these were designed as stills lenses - the IS is quite noisy. The internal mic is almost useless even for reference audio, and the Rode Videomic I have also picks up a lot of it while mounted to my 5D. So using IS means using external sound. It isn't so loud as to be audible at 2 meters though.

Below 30mm I don't need IS much, around 50 it would be useful but I'm quite confident that even without a stubling like or shoulder rig a bit of practice would remove almost all the shake around 50mm.

But I agree with others, just the overall improvement from IS reduces artifacts from the slow cmos sensor. Do a quick pan and it'll still show all the nasty stuff.
 
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