6 HARNESS IMAGE STABILISATION
Change the image stabilisation mode on your telephoto lens to suit different scenarios, such as panning for action shots
Whether you’re taking pictures of wildlife, motorsports or even landscapes, shooting with a long telephoto lens means there’s more risk of camera shake causing blurred images. A 50mm focal length on a full-frame camera gives roughly the same angle of view as the human eye, so any focal length higher than this is more zoomed in and considered to be ‘telephoto’. A 70mm focal length is called a short telephoto, while a 300mm is a long telephoto. The more you zoom in, the more apparent shake and blur will become in your photographs, so image stabilisation can be handy.
If you can, it’s worth stabilising your camera with a tripod, monopod or even a beanbag if you’re shooting from a wildlife hide. Most modern cameras and lenses have some form of stabiliser, although different names are used – Vibration Reduction (VR) on Nikon, Image Stabilization (IS) on Canon and Vibration Compensation (VC) on Tamron, for example. Image stabilisation can be found optically (OIS) or in-body (IBIS), and both systems are sometimes used together to better effect. Optical image stabilisation systems, where a group of lens elements can move to compensate for handheld vibrations, often come with several stabilisation modes that will help you get better shots in particular scenarios.
If you have such a lens, it’s worth getting to grips with the stabilisation modes. If your stabilised optic has a switch for different modes, Mode 1 is usually to correct movement on both the X and Y axes – great for handholding where movement is coming from all directions. Mode 2 usually only corrects for vertical movement, which makes it ideal for panning shots, such as wildlife or motorsports, as it won’t cancel out the movement on the X-axis. Some lenses offer Mode 3, which does the same job as Mode 1 but only activates the stabilisation at the moment the shutter is pressed, so when you look at the LCD screen or through the viewfinder, the stabilisation won’t distract you.