Don't forget that shake reduction does not make your viewfinder any brighter for low light work and does not help you freeze your subject. So you have to work within those parameters. Even if you could handhold down to 1/10 sec or so, your subject could move causing blur.
It is another tool for use in the right situations. I'm glad that I have it, but it doesn't solve all lower light problems. -- Bruce Sunday, January 14, 2007, 10:41:34 PM, you wrote: SH> Pentax claim their shake reduction is worth "2.5 to 4 stops". Some SH> Canon ads describe some of their lenses as having "3-stop" or SH> "4-stop" IS. SH> Are these claims anywhere near believable? What are actual users SH> of K100D or K10D finding? SH> If those claims are real, then an F 2.8 lens with three-stops of extra SH> tolerance for low light will (in some ways) match an F 1.0 lens. Wow! SH> Even if it is only one stop, or 1.5, that's still a very useful gain. SH> If Pentax's "2.5 to 4 stops" claim is accurate, then like a Sigma SH> 18-50/2.8 zoom (equivalent to 28-75 on 35mm) then becomes SH> awfully attractive. That one lens could handle nearly all of the SH> shots I take. SH> If the claim is accurate, then even a fairly slow lens like the SH> Pentax 20-35 F4 becomes quite usable in low light. SH> What if you use a fast lens? An F 1.2 prime plus the claimed 2.5-4 SH> stops gives F 0.5 or better. Even a 1.8 becomes remarkably good SH> in low light. SH> Or is this all just too good to be true? SH> Yes, I do realise that a shake reduction system will neither allow fast SH> shutter speeds for stopping motion nor give the reduced depth of field SH> that a fast lens will. Also, that no magic is going to make a poor lens SH> perform like a top-of-the-line one, or a zoom like a good prime, in SH> sharpness, color rendition, etc. SH> But, given a decent lens, what sort of low light performance should SH> one expect? SH> -- SH> Sandy Harris SH> Quanzhou, Fujian, China -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
