+300mm tripod or IS

tecboy · Mar 13, 2014

When I go 300mm on my telephoto lens, I get a slight camera shake with IS on. Is it better to use a tripod?

BillM · Mar 13, 2014

What shutter speeds are you shooting at ?

Are you sure your lens isn't just soft at 300 MM ?

Gavjenks · Mar 13, 2014

If you actually feel / see the image shaking MORE with IS on than not, then that's seriously broken. Shouldn't be happening. If you're just guessing from blurry photos, then yeah, we'd need more information to make sure it isn't something else.

vimwiz · Mar 13, 2014

What shutter speed?

For my 300mm lens I tend to usually need say 1/320, or 1/250 with IS, in order to avoid shake.

Dont use IS with a tripod, will be counter productive. Use one or the other. IS is for handholding.

Derrel · Mar 13, 2014

At 1/320 second, you might be seeing subject motion blur. I shot some stuff two summers ago with my 24 MP d-slr (which was new to me at the time) using a Nikon 70-300 VR lens with VR enabled...when I looked closely at a LOT of scenes, I could see motion on leaves, in peoples' hair and bodies...it was shocking, moving up from 12MP to 24MP...I realized that at 300mm, a 1-over-focal length [ 1/300 ] shutter speed was clearly NOT fast enough to stop movement that I was not really cognizant of...

Newtricks · Mar 14, 2014

I shoot with an old (pre-VS) 300F/4 Nikkor handheld all the time, adjust aperture/ISO so your shutter speed is at least 1/600.

Braineack · Mar 14, 2014

tecboy said:
When I go 300mm on my telephoto lens, I get a slight camera shake with IS on. Is it better to use a tripod?

words aren't worth 1,000 pictures. Post examples.

table1349 · Mar 14, 2014

Braineack said:
tecboy said:

When I go 300mm on my telephoto lens, I get a slight camera shake with IS on. Is it better to use a tripod?

Click to expand...

words aren't worth 1,000 pictures. Post examples.

Often they aren't even worth the toilet paper their written on.

table1349 · Mar 14, 2014

tecboy said:
When I go 300mm on my telephoto lens, I get a slight camera shake with IS on. Is it better to use a tripod?

Is it better? Depends. Remember the tripod was the original IS for many, many years and still works great today.

Steve5D · Mar 16, 2014

Hand holding a lens; any lens, will never be as stable as placing it on a quality tripod. If using a tripod is an option, no IS lens is going to out-perform it...