good IS for aerial?

[aguia]

I've done a lot of aerial shooting over the years, generally with 16mm or full size camcorders off helicopter mounts. I need to shoot some stuff this summer out of a fixed wing aircraft, super-cub or 185, in mountainous terrain. I've done this before with various video cameras and the success percentage has been really low. The two things working against you are turbulence, and field of view; you can't use too wide a lens or you get too much wing in the shot but narrower angles accentuate every bump. I don't have much experience with the canon IS lenses, how good is something like the 24-105 f4L IS? Are any of the wider non L series IS zooms worth a damn optically?

 

[steventimothy]

You should get a better result with IS than with non-IS, but how much better is hard to say. Obviously, it only takes out small jitters. 24-105 is without a doubt not wide enough, at least on a APS-C camera. The range between about 70-105 would be useless without a gyro-mount, especially on a Super-Cub. There would no doubt be too much movement for IS to help it. So maybe the 17-55mm f/2.8 IS would be a better idea (a 1.6x crop sensor lens only). 17mm isn't super wide on a 7D or equivalent. Try driving in a car on a bumpy road and shooting (carefully) out the window to get some kind of an idea as to how much IS helps.