Should Olympus 5-axis image stabilization help at 1/5 second, or is blur normal?

Question

I’m using an Olympus PEN E-P5 and expected the 5-axis in-body stabilization to help with slow handheld shots. In a shop test I set the lens to 19mm, aperture to f/22, and took a handheld photo at 1/5 second. When I zoomed in, the image still showed blur, and the salesperson told me stabilization does not work slower than 1/60 second.

Is that correct? I bought this camera partly for its stabilization, so I’m trying to understand whether my expectations are unrealistic, my handholding technique is the issue, or whether the stabilization may be faulty.

user1943 · Accepted Answer

This is generally not true. The image stabilization should be helping in that range. However, you can't expect miracles.

Olympus claims 5 stops of stabilization on that model, and, taking that down to a realistic real-world three stops, that means ¹/₅th second has the blur from camera shake you might otherwise expect at ¹/₄₀th of a second. Maybe a little better. If you're using a wide-angle lens, that's probably enough. If you're using a longer telephoto, motion-blur is to be expected. In, fact, even if we grant those nominal 5 stops, we're still talking about ¹/₁₆₀th-equivalent, and if we consider the rule of thumb of one-over-focal length, that means you should get acceptable results with somewhere between a 40mm and 160mm lens, but no longer than that — and only at normal print sizes, not pixel-peeping. Since you're zooming in to look for blur, it's no wonder you're finding it.

And all that isn't even considering subject motion, which is of course not affected by image stabilization. If you're photographing a human subject doing anything but holding very still, and bigger than tiny in the frame, you're going to get movement at ¹/₅th second.

Should Olympus 5-axis image stabilization help at 1/5 second, or is blur normal?

2 Answers

Your Answer

Related Questions