Woodchuck Bill wrote:
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Hi guys. I think you two are talking about two different kinds of
ZLRs. The Olympus 8080 is more of a medium zoom..5X 28-150mm equiv.
This camera's lens goes fairly wide, and it is not bad for
landscapes. I can see why IS would not be as critical a feature on
this camera as it would be on a 12X super-zoom like the Panasonic
Lumix FZ10. They are both really nice cameras, and have feature sets
that compliment their respective lenses.

What has surprised me though, Bill, is how useful a tool IS is in any
case, even for wide-angle shots. We were recently comparing the Nikon
8400 and the Panasonic FZ20 in less that ideal daylight, quite a miserable
day to be honest, and the smaller aperture of the 8400 at 85mm focal
length was requiring shutter speeds of 1/8 whereas it was 1/30 on the
FZ20. With the IS, hand-holding 85mm at 1/30 is no problem, whereas the
8400 required support to avoid blur.

So while some of the gain was the f/2.8 lens, the IS helped a lot.

I hadn't expected this (although I'd done the sums, hence the FZ20 rather
than the Niko 8800), and now really want IS even in a wide-angle camera.

Cheers,
David